Review: Times New Viking – Dancer Equired
Times New Viking – Dancer Equired (2011) [Merge] // Grade: C
A few years ago, Times New Viking recorded their fourth album, Born Again Revisited to VHS tape. The music was pure and noisy. Like most of the current variety of bedroom and/or basement dwellers, some still more humdrum than the next, Times New Viking sound as if they don’t care all that much about the product—the way the tunes end up— and instead, more about the excitement and desire that happens along the way of said material coming out.
Dancer Equired, which notches album number six on their Columbus, Ohio bedposts, is reportedly the first the band has ever recorded in a studio, so naturally it’s a friendlier, more transparent effort that should help outright in gifting the group some spunky new fans. Still playing a pure and noisy minimalist clatter that remembers when they garnered frequent mention as flag-wavers for the shitgaze tag or a time when Guided By Voices weren’t reuniting for festivals, Times New Viking have decided on a little professional cleanse that’s certainly a decision for the better. Much like the transition from record four to five when they promised a “25%” higher-fidelity sound, the band have again scrubbed a layer of grime from the guitar-powered brief bursts, delivering on the promise of a more accessible and encompassing “pop” release throughout. Their first release for Merge Records, Dancer is, outside of a different catalog abbreviation and a newly scrubbed shine, pretty much business as usual for 14 songs; a cute sound defended largely by brief and honest ambition clawing at timelessness.
Through they’re on the right track, the trio’s only noticeable change here is that they’ve put some clean clothes on and maybe got a haircut; “It’s a Culture,” “Somebody’s Slave” and “Fuck Her Tears” are the album’s best and outside of a few bouncy foot-tappers and moments when the trio takes a noticeable diversion into something that’s either acoustic-led (“No Good”) or supported (“No Room To Live”), it’s quite hard to dig up much of anything that makes the 31-minute Dancer Equired exciting and, well, all that distinctive.
