As a lover of most things garage rock, I am pretty appalled by Austin’s Harlem and their buzzed about sophomore album, Hippies. Unlike the structured chaos of Pavement, Hippies not only sounds like it was actually made in a garage, but melds unsophisticated chord progressions with pathetic attempts at happy go lucky nostalgia. It’s messy in all the wrong ways and has no staying power. It sounds like the band decided to play all of their favourite 90s records backwards, recreate the sounds, record them and call it a day. The lead singer has nothing spectacular to offer vocally or lyrically. When they’re not rendering a poor man’s version of Black Lips, they deliver an annoying banter that is nothing more than an unoriginal amalgamation of the surfer punk trend that is old news at this point. Sorry, boys, better luck next decade.
2/5
Harlem - Friendly Ghost [mp3]
