ZapTown

Old Wives’ Tale
Younger Limbs
The Creative Motel, Inc.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Links: http://www.myspace.com/oldwivestale

Let’s face it, pop music is silly. If you have a simplistic, repetitive structure and some oddball element that stands out you are destined to hook the listener in and be immortalized in pop history.

Let me extract two examples: Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” and Morris Day And The Time’s “Jungle Love.” Both are incredible and incredibly infection songs: for Rockwell the Dracula-voice and spaced-out synths that you can probably hear in your head right now (having Michael Jackson sing the chorus didn’t hurt either); for Morris Day, the “Ooh-wee-ooh-wee-ooh.” These have become important staples in pop history.

For Old Wives’ Tale, the band goes almost all the way. On the surface (besides of the album cover of four lanky-legged girls wearing retro re-fabbed fashion that looks more like an ad for American Apparel or the abuse of the word form of “to dance” — “Why don’t you dance-dance?” or “Dance, dance, dancing around.”), for Old Wives’ Tale fulfills most of its pop music destiny.

Where Chromeo is ready to wine and dine you with their slinky beats, this band is demanding the one night stand and expecting you to beg for more. In under 30 minutes, Younger Limbs hits every nerve, joint and tendon.

From the opener, “Look,” you immediately understand this band’s intention as this song sounds like it fell out of a Gene Loves Jezebel album: power rock beats and smeared makeup-laced vocal prowess. It’s also one of the more straightforward songs on the album. “Amphetemine” is a slick city prowl that uses guitar licks like a cruise down Ocean Drive circa 1987. Continuing on, “Over You” transitions into a vomit fest of vocoder vocals and an electro-bleep dance orgy.

In relation to the New Wave and the New Romantic that is all infused into Younger Limbs, the things they have in common is the realization for immediacy, and Old Wives’ Tale lives this philosophy straight down to the groin.

So maybe there is not anything in their songs that distinctly identifies this band as it all blends together. But one thing is for sure is that they understand their immediacy in the pop music paradigm. And with that they utilize Younger Limbs to their advantage, making this album an infectious affair that turns their combination of dance pop and guitar rock into a sloppy make out session.

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