"...for my sorrow."
DISCLAIMER: The following artist is from New Zealand, and yet has absolutely nothing to do with anyone named Finn.
I think I trust the DFA too much. Ever since the one-two of “House of Jealous Lovers” and “Losing My Edge,” I’ve been picking up just about every release that has that stupid little hand-drawn lightning bolt logo on it—and almost without exception have enjoyed them all. But in a year where the DFA may have spread themselves too thin (focusing on their flagship, signing new bands, reissuing old ones, licensing 12” singles from across the sea), it’s reassuring to know that Tim Goldsworthy and James Murphy are still capable of utterly surprising me with their outright coolness, snatching up a fantastic, little-known lo-fi independent act from one of the farthest corners of the world and sharing it with the rest of us.
DISCLAIMER: This album is a compilation of tracks from two prior records released only in New Zealand. Although the bulk of it is composed of tracks from their latest record presented in the same sequence, in some circles this might disqualify it from inclusion on any 2007 list. If you are a member of such circles, fuck you. This record trumps any of that New Pornographers shit to which you keep clinging.
If you think the DFA affiliation means that this album is going to be chock full of white electro-funk and disco beats, think again. Shocking Pinks is basically the outlet for self-confessed reformed heroin junkie Nick Harte to indulge his fascination with the Pretty in Pink soundtrack, and it shows almost immediately. “This Aching Deal” and “Second Hand Girl” could be outtakes from New Order’s Low Life. “How Am I Not Myself?”—a great title undoubtedly stolen from I Heart Huckabees—sounds like an attempt to emulate the Smiths’ famous riff-and-warble combo. And “End of the World” and “Emily” have a melodic romanticism that has been missing from most alt-rock since the gritty ‘90s turned the Psych Furs into Love Spit Love.
But the two greatest things to know about Shocking Pinks are that (1) Harte is a drummer first and foremost, so the record bears an overwhelmingly hot live-drum sound that sets it apart from everything else on the DFA roster and (2) Harte seems committed to a strictly lo-fi approach that frees these songs from a distinct time and place and gives them all a common denominator. The end result is a record with an embarrassment of riches in a number of disparate styles that sounds like a smartly sequenced greatest hits and plays like a cultural touchstone.
There’s a transcendent moment in the video for “End of the World” where an electric saw is throwing sparks as it cuts through the door of a crashed car in order to reach the passengers inside. The sparks are strangely beautiful despite the circumstances, and I like to think this element is part of what makes Shocking Pinks so appealing, and why I rate it so highly.
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