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Their debut record, The Loon, came out in 2006 and amazed us with its quirky energies and its opaque lyrics. Songs like ‘Insistor’ were uniquely the work of Tapes ’N Tapes, for all the debt they undoubtedly owed to predecessor bands like Pavement and Pixies. They were one of the quiet American bands who looked pretty ordinary but made a remarkable sound. Then they became one of those bands who you thought would never make a record as good as their debut because their heads would be turned and their hunger sated by the attention they received for the first album.
The good news is that the second album is as good as the first; hell, it’s possibly even better. Recorded by Dave Fridmann (Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips) at his Tarbox Studios in upstate New York, it doesn’t have a track as singular as ‘Insistor’ but it makes up for that by working better as a album (bit of an odd concept in these iPod days..). You won’t be reaching for the skip button while there are songs with the Pixies punch of ‘Le Ruse’, the discotheque frenzy of the excellent ‘Hang them All’, the delicate strumming of the sensitive ‘Anvil’, the glam rock boldness of ‘The Dirty Dirty’ or ‘Conquest’, which has a strange Echo and the Bunnymen poppishness about it, not least in the slurred poetry of the vocals. Lyrically it will still set your head reeling - “I am the demon of your apple’s eye come round when your head’s on fire” - but this is one of those times when you don’t need to pay attention to the words when the variety of the music is enough to keep you focused, and when the record’s finished you’ll be scrabbling for the play button again. Second albums can be – often are, in fact – a place where ideas get recycled to decreasing, depressing effect, but this completely bucks the trend. It’s great, but quietly so.
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