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Product details
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Track Listings
| 1. All Of This |
| 2. Punching In A Dream |
| 3. Frayed |
| 4. The Source |
| 5. The Sun |
| 6. Eyes |
| 7. Young Blood |
| 8. No Way |
| 9. Spank |
| 10. Jilted Lovers |
| 11. A Wolf In Geek's Clothing |
| 12. The Ends |
| 13. Girls Like You |
Product Description
Review
The last thing any fresh-faced band wants to hear is "hold your horses", but the slow-burn rise to fame can have ameliorating effects. Auckland’s The Naked and Famous topped New Zealand’s chart with their debut single, a synth-pop fist-pumper called Young Blood, and they’ve spoken about their hunger to bust their country’s confines and repeat its success elsewhere. No shame in that. But a rapid rise might well throw a harsh light on the quintet, whose potential is let down by the giveaway of a band still unsteady on their feet: transparency of influence.
Their debut is an eager beaver, bustling with melody and colour, but little of it is fresh. Young Blood and its dutifully punchy, dream-pop follow-up single, Punching in a Dream, take their fuzzy-catchy cues from MGMT, with reductive romantic self-immersion diluting the lashing sarcasm of Kids and Time to Pretend. Alisa Xayalith and Thom Powers’ boy-girl harmonies recall The xx by way of, on the mumbled-word outro of Frayed, Massive Attack. The abrasive psych-rock surges of Spank and A Wolf in Geek’s Clothing threaten to generate sparks, yet the shadows of Nine Inch Nails and The Chemical Brothers weigh heavy.
It’s disappointing because, although orchestrating ingredients is hardly the same as innovating, TN&F’s knack for layering songs and sounds could go somewhere interesting. They write strapping, festival-fit tunes, yet toy with template-stretching textures on The Sun and The Source. Ripples of drama fleetingly enliven Xalayith and Powers’ vocal interplay, she the forceful yin to his drowsy yang. And, in All of This, a sense of wistfulness sits well with an anxious, driving melody.
That very urgency, though, is less well-served by a tendency to lapse into default bluster-pop positions, as if therein lies the surest means to force the A-to-B of Auckland-to-breakaway success. The 1980s synthetics of Eyes offer one example; so do the gusty guitars that strafe the otherwise welcome reserve of No Way. You could justify that over-emphasis as evidence of a broad-ranging band flexing their options and chafing at their limits. But, in songs and career alike, you could also say The Naked and Famous might benefit from a sense of pacing.
--Kevin Harley
Find more music at the BBC This link will take you off Amazon in a new window
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I love this album!!,
By
This review is from: Passive Me Aggressive You (Audio CD)
So, I've been listening to 'Passive Me Aggressive You' for a couple of weeks now. In fact, since the CD arrived direct from the band's native New Zealand, I've barely played anything else.The Naked And Famous have been compared to MGMT and Passion Pit. I have MGMT's albums and they're nowhere near as good as this. You find yourself listening to the first track saying 'This could be a single', then the next track starts and again you find yourself saying 'This could be a single'. Then the third track, then the fourth. They're all such high quality. 'Young Blood' was a big hit in New Zealand and it's easy to see why. 'Punching In A Dream', their first UK single is just as good. 'Young Blood' is seeing a release here in March 2010; If there's any justice, it will be a big hit here too. Judging by the fact that several dates on their forthcoming tour of small UK venues have already sold out months in advance, it looks like word's certainly got round. It's fair to say that not too many people in the UK right now have heard of The Naked And Famous. Mind you, when I first started listening to Franz Ferdinand, nobody had heard of them either. However, by the end of 2011, I'm willing to wager that The Naked And Famous will be the name that's on everybody's lips. By the way, check out the great video for 'Young Blood'. It's reassuring to see such a quality video matching a great song.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Let's all calm down a bit.,
By Godfrey (Essex, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Passive Me, Aggressive You (MP3 Download)
Reading the reviews of this album on amazon ('beyond music!' 'the sound of 2011!') you'd be forgiven for thinking that The Naked & Famous were some combination of John Lennon, Dubstep and Jesus. Frankly though, I'm not concerned with the 'sound of 2011', only the sound of their music. This is a brilliant, solid, highly enjoyable album and they're already proving to be the biggest (and best) thing to come out of New Zealand for years (OK, that's not hard when the main competition is The Flight of the Conchords, but still). I listened to little else for days when I bought this album it's still more than decent six months later. Their sound, though not unique, is certainly distinctive and ideal for festivals (this album has 'Glasto' written all over it). It's not musically complex, or even ridiculously catchy, but the thumping bass and combination of distorted guitars and crystal clear keyboards just make you want to move. The stand out songs include the singles Young Blood and Punching in a Dream, but also the less well known (but fantastic) Girls Like You, which is bound to feature of several upset teenager boys' mix-tapes this summer (though that's not a criticism in this case). The Sun (an all too familiar story of hangover ridden post-coital shame) also has a sinister, haunting quality to it which is just so cool. If I had a complaint about it, it would only be that the promised crechendo isn't impressive enough, but I'm nitpicking really. No Way also has a brilliant breakdown at its end which makes one lament that the rest of it isn't as good.There are holes, people could find Alis Xayalith's voice trying (though I don't), Jilted Lovers tries (and fails) to cover its emptiness with shedloads of distortion and The Ends, with its annoyingly 80s guitar lick, is a needless interlude, but again, these are hardly massive complaints and at worst you can just click the 'next' button (you won't have to much). It's definately a contender for best album of 2011 and does deserve far more accolades than it has recieved, particularly given the competition from summer's sub-par festival bands. So this is one of the few times you can actually believe the hype.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Most Underated Album of The Year,
By
This review is from: Passive Me, Aggressive You (Audio CD)
In short this album is amazing, my most played album of the summer. It might not be ground breaking epic music but it is seriously good and a very satidfying album. I bought it on the baseis that Punching in a Dream is tune and there might be one or 2 other good tracks on there. Good news there are no bad tracks it rocks from start to finish. If you dont have it, you're missing out!
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