This review is part of a series looking back at significant albums on their anniversaries. Through the benefit of hindsight we will be viewing the album not just as it was released, but how it stands the test of time, as well as its place in the band’s discography and the genre in general.
Frenchkiss Records – 2 Oct 2001
Not their best, but an important step forward
Go Forth isn’t the best Les Savy Fav album but it’s an important step in their progression as a band. Les Savy Fav (along with The Dismemberment Plan, among others) ended up helping to define the dancey indie punk sound that took off in the early to mid aughts. It was a sound that owed as much to Fugazi and Shellac as it did to Gang Of Four and XTC, and as an original series Gossip Girl devotee, it’s still baffling to me that this style of music (albeit a fairly corporatized version) was marketable to teenagers. Anyway, Les Savy Fav never really fit into that category because they were always a little too chaotic and a little too weird (I mean…their name doesn’t even have actual words in it), but there’s no questioning that they came from a broad and diverse community of musicians all reacting to similar influences in extremely different ways. But before all that, they were a chaotic and strange punk band. Coming off of the hectic energy of 3/5 and The Cat And The Cobra the band sought to explore more pop idioms as part of their already off kilter punk style.
After Go Forth Les Savy Fav really perfects the formula of “sort of abstract and weird dancey verse” plus “extremely catchy chorus” but on Go Forth the band hasn’t quite figured out how best to navigate all that musical territory. Case in point is a song like “Crawling Can Be Beautiful” which is delicously weird at the beginning, but has a chorus that doesn’t pay off in the way that they seemed to want it to. “The Slip” has a similar issue: It’s more abstract and introspective than most of the music surrounding it, and the band stays in that sonic space for so long that when the climax at the end of the song finally arrives it feels forced.
Go Forth shows the band reacting more to their contemporaries too. “One To Three” is almost a Modest Mouse song and the chorus of “Adopduction” could be too if the rest of the song didn’t have so many left turns. But songs like “Pills,” “Tragic Monsters,” and the aforementioned “Adopduction” are great examples of the sound that ends up making Les Savy Fav such an amazing band. They find a way to be weird and abstract, poppy, catchy, and sometimes even a little emo all in one song without things feeling overstuffed. The only real problem with Go Forth is that there’s not enough of those kinds of songs. The least successful Les Savy Fav songs are the ones that either focus too much on one of those categories or fail to find the connections between all of it.
It’s worth noting that there’s a six year gap between Go Forth and it’s 2007 follow up Let’s Stay Friends. What they did in between is really interesting: Releasing seven 7″ singles which ended up comprising the majority of the 2004 compilation Inches. Inches is where the band really perfects the sound they started establishing on Go Forth and it’s no coincidence that it also contains far more fan favorite songs. I can’t help but compare Les Savy Fav to Hot Hot Heat, another group that started as an extremely chaotic but somehow danceable punk band (I highly suggest listening to their Scenes One Through Thirteen if you can find a copy) before transitioning into more of a pop format. Of course, Les Savy Fav leans more into their art rock tendencies than Hot Hot Heat but it still makes for an interesting comparison study.
All in all, Go Forth is worth listening to if it’s a blind spot in your listening. Inches, The Cat and the Cobra, and Let’s Stay Friends are all better albums but there’s nothing like the listening experience of a band developing and fine tuning their craft. Plus listening to four albums is gonna take you listen than four hours so why not give it a try?
Musician and writer – I play in Cheap City and run Dollhouse Lightning
