A yr earlier than Kim Gordon co-founded Sonic Youth, she revealed “Trash Medicine and Male Bonding,” an essay on New York’s hypermasculine fringe rock circuit. “All through one’s life,” she deadpanned in its opening traces, “one turns into ‘out of tune.’” May Sam Fenton and Jezmi Tarik Fehmi probably disagree? As Double Virgo, the pair make poorly blended guitar music that feels borderline voyeuristic: two dudes, most likely type of drunk, fidgeting with detuned Squiers and mourning the losses of their respective freaks. It isn’t the ear-splitting anarchy Gordon witnessed at CBGB, but it surely is earnest, which is especially disarming for the bonding males in query.
Fenton and Fehmi are higher often called the guitarists of Bar Italia, a British band whose personal vibe, till very just lately, sat someplace between Souvlaki and The Shining. Their strongest songs, just like the slinky “settle down with me” and the jangly “changer,” showcased the duo at a vocal excessive—breathy and forlorn, like sexually repressed ghosts who by no means received any on Earth. As Double Virgo, they commerce ghoulish abjection for chummy singsong, the sound of a jam session that wished to change into a band. It’s ragtag, sloppy, and infrequently, fairly good.
Three albums in, is fairly good the perfect we are able to do? Shakedown, their newest, is conceptually tighter than its predecessors, aimless tasks that weren’t that secretive about being hard-drive cleanouts. It’s the primary Double Virgo album that doesn’t really feel like a compilation, and with that comes the implicit admission that Fenton and Fehmi do take this critically, even when it doesn’t all the time sound prefer it. The mixes are friendlier, the riffs cleaner, the songcraft extra mature.
However the defining dilemma, and what traps Shakedown within the realm of pretty-good, is that they’ll’t appear to resolve whether or not—or how—being “critical” accommodates their ragtag, boys-in-a-basement credo. This makes for frustratingly middle-ground music, the place glimpses of maturity are cancelled out by boyish antics. Take “Position Play,” a feat of vocal layering that comes strikingly near prime Police. It’s the perfect Fenton and Fehmi have ever sounded collectively—too unhealthy what they’re saying is, “You give nice head/You’re actually good in mattress/Your breath’s so candy/I do know you’re actually neat.” These low factors are puzzling, as a result of for those who observe these guys’ different work, you already know that they’re able to rather more. Two months in the past, Fenton launched The Richest Man in Babylon OST, an authentic rating for Bar Italia frontwoman Nina’s debut movie. Examine his vocal efficiency on its surprisingly modern “Aria” to this album’s “pink card,” a clunker that sounds just like the final man on the pub singing alongside to a Kia industrial.
