With their lackadaisical delivery, chilled beats and not-fussed musings about the love life of young Americans, LA's TV Girl give the impression that they crawl out of bed at 2pm and lounge around all day watching meaningless TV and eating junk food, but the ideas and skill that go into making their sample-heavy, big-beat indie-hop suggest otherwise. New album 'Who Really Cares' finds them on familiar ground, but you really wouldn't want them to seek a new direction, because their fusion of retro soul and girl group sounds with laid-back indiepop and hip-hop production gives them an unmistakable sound, and one that traverses genres like few others.
With a looping keyboard riff, chopped-up samples and a bleary-eyed drawl, opening track 'Taking What's Not Yours' will instantly strike the right chord with fans of their previous material. It sets the bar pretty high, but TV Girl don't let things slip for the rest of the album, making this arguably their most consistent release to date. The spangly cut-and-paste approach of songs like 'Song About Me (feat. Maddie Acid)', 'Not Allowed' and the lovelorn 'For You' share common ground with The Go! Team, but that collective's often hectic and energetic rush is swapped for something with an altogether more lethargic vibe, with the casual handclaps of 'Cigarettes Out The Window' making for perfect, relaxed sunshine-pop (although the messed-up vocal samples at the end are both genius and a little disturbing).
There's an ethereal ambiance found on 'Till You Tell Me To Leave', a track which also incorporates some nice vintage electronica, while '(Do The) Act Like You Never Met Me' is a summery patchwork that recalls Avalanches. That penchant for stirring '60s sounds into modern production can be found on the excellent 'Safe Word'. Dolly Parton once said "It costs a lot of money to look this cheap", and in the case of this album it could be said that it takes an awful lot of effort to sound this lazy. 'Who Really Cares' is impeccably put together and contains a bounty of ideas, this is TV Girl at their wonderfully individual best.
TV Girl's website
Buy: 'Who Really Cares'.
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