Tapes 'N Tapes 'Walk It Off'

Difficult second album. Not so much for them maybe, but for the listener.

When Tapes 'N Tapes burst onto the scene in 2006, they were a breath of fresh air. Full of youthful enthusiasm and energy, their debut album 'The Loon' was a vibrant mix of Pavement and The Violent Femmes and tunes like 'Cowbell' and 'Insistor' suggested that the Minneapolis based band could become very special indeed.

I started to worry a little about this follow up album when I heard that Dave Fridmann was producing it. Not my favourite producer (see Low dvd review), I feared that Fridmann would bury the band's catchy riffs and hummable hooks under a big wall of 'fuzz' and make this album a big mess.

Its not a mess exactly, but its not an improvement either.

Opener 'Le Ruse' is actually a great start. Certainly more dense than anything on 'The Loon', the fuzzy guitars sound great here and the melody peeks through. Its a short blast of an opening track and 'Time of Songs' and 'Hang Them All' build on this, using roughly the same template as their debut album. Considering the fact that the latter is track 3, it is sad to report that at this stage the band pretty much run out of ideas. There are decent moments, 'Conquest' is funky and 'Say Back Something' is pretty and has a nagging melody similar to 'Omaha' from 'The Loon' but much of the rest is noisy and tuneless.

'Walk It Off' is a record of two halves. The first sounding like a louder follow-up EP to 'The Loon', the second sounding like a jam recorded for a demo tape, suggesting that the band should have continued writing for a few months before recording. The production doesn't help, the vocals are too low in the mix and the melodies are drowned out. There will be no comparisons with Pavement or The Violent Femmes, which may please the band but they now need to decide where to go next, because 'Walk It Off' is a major disappointment.

5.6

'Walk It Off' is out now on XL Recordings