Tapes 'N Tapes - Walk it Off

Artist - Tapes 'N Tapes

Title - Walk it off

Hometown -The Twin Cities

Label - XL

Street Date - Out now

The Hits - "Le Ruse", "The Dirty Dirty"

RILY- Overrated and hyped to death indie rock

Richter Magnitude Scale - Light

Crap. It is hard to talk smack about a record when the band does something as decent as asking their fans to sign up under the name Team Tapes 'N Tapes for a breast cancer walk-a -thon and then the top fundraisers will earn personalized / autographed copies of their new record. That isn't just keen publicity, those are some good-hearted boys as well.

Every review of Walk it Off pretty much throws around the same band names, The Pixies, Modest Mouse, and Arcade Fire. Sorry I don't hear Pavement but every other review throws their name around too. I would say the La's before Pavement. Anyhow, It must suck to be a newish band that hasn't earned it's own identity by their second record. It also must suck that most journalists go out of their way to tell the reader that this release was recorded by Dave Fridmann as if associating TNT with Mercury Rev might save this release.

Well, it doesn't. It starts off with a blown speaker explosion and then takes a deep dive into yawn territory shortly there after. There are good songs here but they sound stuck in studio mud. I wonder what the impact these song would carry with a different producer / engineer behind the wheel or if in fact the band is just his eeehhh these days and we should just leave it at that.

Poe-tay-toe or pah-tah-doe we have ourselves one of the most hyped records of the year falling short of pretty much every one's expectations. I feel bad for this band because they didn't ask to be the next Arcade Fire, sites like Pitchfork built them up to be that and I don't think even the best band in the world would want that kind of pressure while working on their second record.