Farewell seem to be doing everything backwards (which I guess means they’ll start huge and fall to pieces in fifteen minutes): they put out their début album Isn’t This Supposed To Be Fun?! in February (possibly the happiest set of songs you’ll hear all year), and are only now embarking upon their début tour. Their name seems to invite ridicule but Farewell have a bunch of songs to back up their irony.
Finding six Americans with a sense of humour and a sense of irony is hard enough at the best of times, but adding this to perky power-pop plastic synthesizer music is virtual genius. Farewell open their singles attack with only one song and only two and a half minutes; “Eighty-Eights” sounds like a pop-punk band being smeared by Erasure… what an unusual idea.
One of the most infectious qualities of Farewell and “Eighty-eights” is the sheer joy on show: from the toy keyboard sounds that bleep the song into life, to the crunching guitar plunge that follows it, to the finely produced vocal paroxysms that decorate the meat of the melody this single is a wonderful advert for the album (hey, just the way singles used to be).
I can’t rid myself of the feeling that Farewell have been listening seventies prog rock bands on the quiet too, what with that striking keyboard tinkle. Still not sure about the name, though.
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Posted in Music reviews |
Tags: Eighty-Eights, electronic, Farewell, pop, pop-punk, punk
