LU is a group bent on resurrecting the feel of an earlier style of music without ever quite aping that style. It's a noble and rewarding effort that attempts to hone the rough edges of the avant garde with resonant sounds from the band members' musical memories. It's a wordless album that speaks eloquently.
The band consists of former members of various DC bands, including Lorelei and the Lilys, all of whom have been brought together by a post-punk, pre-New Wave sound. Their press material refers to the band's sound as "hit(ting) sonically between Neu! and New Order", which is a pretty fair evaluation. It seems that these folks weren't comfortable putting down the guitars when they decided to pick up vintage keyboards and drum machines. The album recalls the underground spirit of the early eighties, when bands combined the rough, angular guitar aggression of punk with interesting polyrhythms and keyboards. As a special bonus, this time around nobody has to dress like Robert Smith or drone on and on about how he or she liked Joy Division way before anyone else did.
As I said before, the name of the game here is referencing, not aping, and as the album progresses the group's more experimental side comes to the fore. "Mood Elevator", the album's opener, could easily have come from The Cure's Seventeen Seconds, with crisp drum sounds, thudding bass, and mingling keyboards and guitars. From that point, LU becomes interested in recasting the formula, seeing what nuances can be brought from this basic arrangement through emphasis, shading and subtlety. "Hot Knives" concentrates on the drum track, pulling out surprise vocal loops and hammering guitar figures to emphasize the cleanness of the percussion line. "International Supercock" gives the lead to the keyboards and effects for the song's first half, and hands it to the guitar for the second. "Expressway Ends" muffles everything, then brings each sound forward and distorts the whole before stripping it away again. On "Pink Sock" they play only with the drums and synth bass, mixing and matching sounds and forming a strange pastiche of the familiar and the avant garde.
Which brings us full circle in discussing why this album is so interesting. Every time you think you've heard this song before, it turns out you haven't.
