We’ve seen a bunch of indie-rock-supergroups pop up over the years, such as The Raconteurs, The Dead Weather or Broken Social Scene, and with The Rentals formation on this album, we can’t help but acknowledge, this might be another one. The brainchild of Matt Sharp, former bassist for Weezer, is joined by Black Keys’ Drummer Patrick Carney, Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig of Lucius and violist Lauren Chipman, a renown violist hailing from LA.
It’s an interesting record, coming from all these angles – Weezer’s 90s punk rock, The Black Keys hint of blues, Lucius’ lush lady-voices. From the beginning till end the album embraces an air of a forlorn memory, somewhat distant and vague in the past. “It’s Time To Come Home,” a waltzing, somewhat melancholic pop song, sets the tone for the record, followed by bubbly “Traces Of Our Tears.” At this point, the distorted keys become an apparent theme – to a degree, they are always there, just slightly more or less fuzzy and crazy – in “Irrational Things” and “Thought of Sound” they borderline Stoner rock. “Stardust” and lead single “1000 Seasons” bring us back to college, or high school, even middle school – when ever it was that we played Snakeon our Nokia 3210. The whimsical side of the album is found in tracks like “Damaris,” “Songs of Remembering” and “Seven Years” – spacey keys and Nintendo-like sounds dominate the bridges. Finally it ends with “The Future” a soft, whispering lullaby.
All good things – the voices, the arrangements, they flow, the production is clearly very on point. Nonetheless, that air of the past won’t quite let us, and it’s kind of sad. We remember those kids playing Snake on their shitty phones, and the music that we listened to in those years. That’s the music that formed us – not entirely, of course, but a lot. Yet the production is so different from that music back then, it’s very clean, but trying to be edgy. Lost in Alphaville sounds like the Rentals – Sharp and Carney, Wolfe and Laessig and Chipman – still want to play that music, but essentially, they have upgraded from the Nokia to the iPhone 6. Which is okay. So have we.
If you want to see Lost in Alphaville live – you should. It’s happening this Saturday, the 27th at Irving Plaza.
Article by: Julia Maehner
Photo credit: Brantley Gutierrez
