 Love As Laughter - www.loveaslaughter.net
Laughter's Fifth (released 2005)
Sub Pop Records - www.subpop.com
As much as I can't stand hippie music, I guess I still found this album pretty good. Love As Laughter plays a mellow grind-pop lush rock that is similar to (blech!) Modest Mouse or Built To Spill (whom I actually like). The disc has eleven tracks of groovy guitar work and speaking-singing vocals that reminds me of several indie pop bands from the mid-nineties, especially the one where the guys says somethign like: "Push the little daisies, and make 'em come up." Can't really remember who sang that, but that's what I am humming to myself during breaks on this album. Perhaps the best song on the disc, is also the poppiest: "Dirty Lives", which incidentally sounds very much like the band I was trying to remember previously. You know I used to do a lot of drugs in my youth, I was good at it too! I had a lot of fun doing them, and every once in awhile I'd find a record that was the perfect soundtrack to my alt-reality haze. If Love As Laughter was around back when I was stoned 90% of the day, I think I'd have been into them a little more. Coming from Sub Pop Records, the band must be good, right? Well if you ask me, Sub Pop appears to be steering away from rock music, I mean good, heavy driving rock music. I think they are still trying to distance themselves from their late-eighties/early-nineties persona, which is cool, I guess. But I think that their catalog is suffering because of this move. Occasionally Sub Pop puts out a rock album, like the Thermals (who are excellent!), but most of the time it appears to be the moody, indie college rock bullshit that sounds just like Love As Laughter. Is Sub Pop saying that college rock is going the other way...away from aggression and keg parties to a more hazy, drug-filled paranoia. I hope not, cause the rock music from the Sub Pop is so much better than thi garbage indie hippy rock. -MG |
