"You guys are extremely talented. I loved it! I loved all of it. My favourite one was 'The Artist', my favourite song, and I love the way each song fades at the end, it fades into the next one. Very clever. So that's the official critique of your mother." And so runs 'Jane's Critique', a voicemail message from Brad Petering's mom. Aside from predictable plaudits given by San Diego duo TV Girl's nearest and dearest, over the course of a few free EPs, and now this, their debut "mixtape", they're gradually becoming the darlings of blogland and find themselves in a great position for a potential breakthrough as they signal the end of their sampling phase to move on to creating their own work.
I say their own work, and 'The Wild, The Innocent, The TV Shuffle' is their own creation but it relies heavily on samples, and this is the reason for all their material being freely available; it avoids legal issues involving clearance, royalties etc. The cut and paste approach shouldn't detract from the quality of this album either, piecing together fragments of other songs with your own beats, melodies and lyrics is an art-form in itself and one that TV Girl have mastered. For fully-fledged examples of how successful this can be you only need to listen to 'I Wonder Who She's Kissing Now', 'It Evaporates' or 'Loud & Clear'; all terrific stand-alone tracks.
Playing 'spot the sample' can be fun here. TV Girl have clearly been rummaging around in the same crates of old records as The Go! Team, there's a clear passion for doo-wop, girl-groups, vintage soul and 60s psychedelia. Rather than being as sugar-sweet as the Brighton mob, not everything here is packed with hope and some of the lyrics are centred around failing relationships. As a general rule of thumb 'The Wild...' is a fun, creative and accessible patchwork, and while not all segments are as perfect as previous tracks 'Benny & The Jetts' or 'It's Not Something', the highlights are utterly beautiful and the rest is far more interesting than the majority of bands out there. As this chapter closes it'll be exciting to find out to where they're headed next. For the time being though, we're with Jane on this one.
Free download: 'The Wild, The Innocent, The TV Shuffle'
TV Girl's website
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