LIGHTSPEED CHAMPION – LIFE IS SWEET, NICE TO MEET YOU « New music, features, reviews, news and free mp3s

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ALBUMS

LIVE

“We get along really well, we don’t argue or get drunk and call each other bastards.”

ALBUM REVIEWS

Captain Ahab

End of Irony

(Deathbomb Arc)

Since Mika Miko split and No Age started touring the world, LA’s The Smell scene has been searching for a new, less garage-y sound, and its found it in ravesploitation.

Kele

The Boxer

(Wichita/Polydor)

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Tokyo Police Club

Champ

(Memphis Industries)

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LIVE REVIEWS

Liars

Shepherd's Bush Empire , London

Liars have always been proponents of the idea of more – more bass, more fuzz, more weirdness.

Album Review

Lightspeed Champion

Life is Sweet, Nice To Meet You

[Domino]

6/10

Devonte Hynes might have been one of the celebrated catalysts for the loud, brash day-glo stain that characterised the vacuous Klaxons generation, but he’s done much since then to escape his colourful past. A galaxy away from the trashy dance punk of Test Icicles, Lightspeed Champion still carries some of the scenester hallmarks of those halcyon days but they’ve been tempered by some surprisingly agreeable tendencies. Following on from his middling debut, this sophomore effort has slightly grander aspirations. Laced with drawing room piano and sweeping string embellishments, there’s a healthy sense of diversity to ‘Life is Sweet…’ as wholly pleasant balladry sits alongside the jerkier sass of tracks like ‘Marlene’. But this, along with Hynes’ occasionally lax lyrics (“Dalston lane seems grey/I’ve spent all my coins, I’m down to my loins”), presents the jumbled contrast that dogged his debut. Still perfectly satisfying but muddled all the same.

By Reef Younis