| · These two debut records are guaranteed to leave you speechless. Mid-western hipsters like their hip-hop mixed with their punk rock. Manchester quartet proves that they're just a bunch of wankers.
The albums from Hymie's Basement and Longview had me stumped for very different reasons. One record was so original that I couldn't find the words to match its ingenuity. The other was drab and vapid, putting me in an apathetic stupor.
Hymie's Basement is the catchy collaborative effort of Andy Broder (Fog) and Yoni Wolf (cLOUDDEAD). It follows the manifesto of experimental hip-hop made famous by Anticon – the Internet art collective of Web-based musicians. Hymie's Basement ignores the rules of songwriting, mixing classical piano, drum beats, clanging pipes, loops of distortion, hip-hop rhymes and indie guitar riffs into jaw-dropping musical arrangements. Broder and Wolf harmonize in strange monotonous duets and crack themselves up by the sheer stupidity of their lyrics. The song "21st Century Pop Song" lives up to its grandiose title, merging classic slacker-pop with rap. Their music is the perfect balance of fragility and aggression. An evolution of music, their self-titled full-length album successfully merges two opposing musical forms. The record's charm is in its homemade quality and DIY attitude – be sure to listen closely between tracks and hear Broder and Wolf chat and curse as they stumble through take after take.
Music should make you want to tap your toes and snap your fingers – not shrug your shoulders. Be prepared to enter the void with Longview's pale offering of '90s Brit-pop. Ten minutes into listening to Mercury, I forgot it was playing and started doing something else without realizing that I still had the stereo on. That's never happened to me before (except once at an airport when I hadn't slept for three days and forgot where I was). Longview is dull and unimaginative. The lyrics are so embarrassingly simple that the only thing you can say about them is that they rhyme – "You know what they say/At the end of the day/The days fade away."
While Longview is satisfied to stay in the past and live off the scraps of bands like Oasis and the Verve, Hymie's Basement creates an entirely unique free-form. In the end, originality wins out over mediocrity. Music should challenge and inspire, not put you to sleep.
HYMIE'S BASEMENT 4/5
LONGVIEW 0/5
KIRSTEN KOSLOSKI
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