Dance punk band fails to deliver

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March 19, 2008

Slick Dogs and Ponies is a classic final album for a one-hit-wonder. Maybe Louis XIV will create another album, but they probably shouldn’t. It might be impossible to make a more lethargic album than Slick Dogs and Ponies –– no hit songs can be squeezed out of this languid collaboration.

Louis XIV is supposed to be a dancy punk band –– this is the reputation the band received after their hit song, “Finding Out True Love Is Blind,” exploded onto the Indie scene. The single boasts a punchy beat and catchy tune, which is a style that Louis XIV fails to reproduce in any song on Slick Dogs and Ponies.

Actually, they didn’t fail to create catchy, dancy songs, they hardly tried –– there’s something inherently lazy about the band’s new album. All the beats lag, the guitars merely crunch out distorted quarter notes, and most of the time no one actually sings, but one guy in the band half-screams over the noise as if he were in a drunken stupor.

The guy’s name is Jason Hill, and his lyrics and singing parts don’t contain melody, harmony, phrasing, or any other aspect that would make them musical. He merely confirms in his lyrics every listener’s suspicion that this guy has spent the last couple of years indoors, drinking, smoking, and creating music the moment he wakes up with a hangover.

In the song, “Hopesick,” he even says, “I need sun, I need hope, I need help, I need dope,” to no particular melody or musical line. Hill’s right when he says that he needs help, and his band does too.

Slick Dogs and Ponies is a sadder, slower album than their previous one, The Best Little Secrets are Kept, and that doesn’t work for what should be an upbeat dance band. Louis XIV didn’t stick to their principles, or even try to for that matter, which is why Slick Dogs and Ponies will soon be forgotten.

by Andy Lesser, staff writer

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