Whether Abe Vigoda are named after the Godfather actor I am not going to assume. What we do know is Abe Vigoda are LA’s myriad favourite, a complex agenda they are but quintessentially compelling at intervals. An entrapment of tropical punk, new wave, raggaeton and pop their music that hits you like a whiplash. They are reminiscent of bands like Animal Collective and Lemonade purely for their relentless onslaught of prolonged jams melting into songs.
They take New Wave jam-style sound from Battles to songs like ‘Bear Face’ and ‘Dead City/Waste Wilderness’ with pinches of pop. The former sounds like an underground take on a Vampire Weekend mix, with muddle musicianship. However, it remits like a carnival with a raggaeton beat at the forefront of this savvy pop curve ball. The latter rekindles the boisterous beat with Vidal’s unyielding chanting.
Next on the record is a short interlude called ‘Lantern Lights’ that starts with a subsonic blast of guitar distortion before an impromptu end. ‘Animal Ghosts’ is full of distortion, calamity drumming and the scant ability to differentiate what lyrical content exists within the music, Vidal sounds like a muffled Tim Harrington (Les Savy Fav). Its like finding a needle in a hay stack with the LA quartet. The twisted tropical-punk piece ‘Cranes’ changes directions quicker than you can blink, it shudders with flavours from all genres and reaffirms that there really isn’t any boundaries with Abe Vigoda’s music.
‘Visi Rings’ collages an abundance of new wave, foxed-out uprising boasting’s of guitar mutation on a canvas of speaker splitting beats. ‘Skeleton’ reflects a punk clamour that extorts their sound with one last mash-up on the album, a breathless onslaught upon your now aching ear.
It’s hard to differentiate whether this is a twisted masterpiece or a colossal pile of racket at first. It is music for discerning tastes that’s for sure but maybe not in one place at the same time. A molten commotion from these noise making LA students honing their experimental freedom-seeking values. Not for the people who have attention problems. The more I listened to it, the more I started to hate it! It wears you down like a bad relationship.
Abe Vigoda are named after the infamous Godfather actor and are LA’s myriad favourites, quintessentially compelling, explosive electro-terrorists. They purvey tropical punk, new wave, raggaeton and electro-pop ethics, that jerk your head back like whiplash. Abe Vigoda are cut from the same cloth as bands such as fellow American electro heads Battles, with further similarities to Animal Collective and Lemonade, in the way the bands flurry of songs melt into prolonged jams, in what can sound like muddled musicianship far to often. The influences are rife and obvious, ‘Bear Face’ an underground take on Vampire Weekend, a savvy pop pinch enthused with raggaeton and ‘Dead City Waste Wilderness’ streams unyielding chanting, on a canvas of boisterous sporadic beats. Even interlude ‘Lantern Lights’ subsonic blast of guitar distortion is ramshackled and is duplicated in texture in ‘Animal Ghosts’ with its blur of lyrical mess. The album continues with the new wave mutated beat-laden ‘Visi Rings’ and then into ‘Skeleton’ a punky mash-up which irritates the ear. Some may find it hard to differentiate whether this is a twisted masterpiece or a crock of shit, the latter seems the more conclusive answer!
