Best Fwends’ music is a big attention-deficit-disordered smash-up of punk, early Beastie Boys and unrefined 8-bit sounds. It's a kindred sound to those of British bands like Gay Against You and Applicants: frantic, but rooted in pop and/or rock. It’s trashy, cheap, headachy noise, but noise that a lot of love has clearly been put into. What at first seems to be simply brash and unpleasant does reveal itself to have a certain degree of subtlety and sophistication - 'Adultnap', for example, is a punk-pop classic of sorts, albeit one viewed in the lowest possible resolution, pixelated to fuckery.
Alphabetically Arranged is supposed to act a bit like The Hive's Your New Favourite Band - a best-of-so-far aimed to launch the band in the UK market. In fittingly don’t-give-a-fuck/post-modernly-self-aware (you decide) style, they've just chosen a bunch of "the best and worst songs [they've] made over the past four years" and whacked them on the CD - you guessed it - alphabetically arranged, from 'Aaww Some' to 'ZWZZT'. This makes the record pretty much impossible to approach as a whole, to really take it in. Is it a cop out of actually putting some effort into the track listing and the complete product, or a statement about the transience of digital media? ("It's just going to end up on iPods anyway, so here you go.") Either way, the barrage of 29 short tracks tends to lean towards a tiring indistinguishability.
That said, there are certainly highlights: ‘Bump in the Night’ is almost Hot Chip-esque pop geek'n'b, whilst ‘Days Seem Shorter’ seems to evoke the purest, most un-ironic love of the group sing-along power ballad at the same time as a certain unsettling attention seeking brattishness. Tellinglly, ‘Get Cleen’ launches into a Bonde Do Role-shaming battle-hop groove before being slowed down and stopped after 35 seconds. Frustrating.
It's the type of music that journalists feel compelled to hyperbolise about, and it’s certainly hyperbolic music, but at the centre of things it’s a bunch of pretty good pop songs with a wide-eyed, excitable sense of optimism in the freedom of its production.
This is basically
exactly what I think of the "album", barring discrepancies over the highlights ("Bump in the Nigh" does nothing for me). Maybe 7 is a bit harsh though, considering how many tracks there are on it, and the fact you can easily ignore half of it and be left with your own half hour long highlights package.
yeahbut
the music just isnt really that great, is it? some is verging on greatness tho
I don't think there are many great songs on there
in terms of structure and length, etc., but musically, while there's obviously nothing groundbreaking, I think it's amongst some of the most enjoyable stuff released this year. Give something like Dream Off another round of verse/chorus and a middle-eight and I'd say you've got a pop classic. Certainly the out-and-out pop, like Dream Off and Skate or Live, I'd compare with the likes of The Unicorns.
It's only really in terms of structure and developing ideas that they let themselves down, but they probably realise this and just don't care, so it seems harsh to criticise them for it. I'd give it an 8.
Loved what I've heard so far
My stuff is so badass, my stuff is so good!
Freaking fantastic helium-rock...
RstJ