These New Puritans
Beat Pyramid
Domino Records
By Jose Fritz
Normally the cleverness of album art is inversely proportional to the quality of the music. The foil print, the black on black textured hash patterns and the kaleidoscopic light patterns inside the pamphlet did not bode well. Pretty, shiny... all the things that indie rock cannot rightfully be. But the indie credibility heaped up on them already can’t come from even an army of cappuccino-cranked, Tom-Wolfe-wanna-be New York publicists. Behind the prissy packaging is substance. Let there be no doubt.
The music underneath it is thin and ridged like young bones but with a far more abstract geometry. The band is composed of Thomas Hein and Sophie Sleigh-Johnson and twin brothers Jack and George Barnett. Their producer, Gareth Jones, has worked with Liars, Wire and Einsturzende Neubauten. You can taste and smell each one of those. The Barnetts don’t milk the twin shtick. Actually they seem to downplay it in an effort to keep the attention on their music.
George performs the nearly impossible mixing sequenced beats with real drums in a way that favors the organic. Similar bands like the Klaxons and LCD Soundsystem, as great as they may be; lean the other way. This leaves them decisively in the same school as Gang of Four, Wire and Test Icicles.
We can argue about the deeper meaning or the symbolism of the lyrics but the fact is the band is made up of 19 year olds and I’m not really interested in any deeper meaning gleaned from anybody who can’t buy liquor in the state of Massachusetts. Ageism aside, the lyrics stand on their own. On “C.16th,” Jack Barnett sings:
“And to history, we will say — We were right, we were right, we were right, we were right, we were right, we were right, we were right, we were right, we were right, we were right, we were right, we were right, we were right, we were right.”
That’s youth for you. But it rings so true for this moment. We’re on the verge of so many catastrophes and an entire generation is left staring at their parents and grandparents dumbfounded; even unable to ask: “This is all your fault?” Maybe I’m projecting. But if I am, I’m not alone and if truth is consensus we can decide as a group that this will be our collective anthem of generational blame and guilt distribution. Via con dios.
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