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Knives Falling Out of The Moon
“It’s funny, but certain faces seem to go in and out of style. You look at old photographs and everybody has a certain look to them, almost as if they’re related. Look at pictures from ten years later and you can see that there’s a new kind of face starting to predominate, and that the old faces are fading away and vanishing, never to be seen again.” A.M.
Nine months ago, I’d chanced upon a sub50 playsonSoundcloud band from Chennai, and quietly reveled in the discovery of what I’d imagined were a couple of jittery South Indian kids gawky, with big hair and tambourines and access to a lot of Vampire Weekend, awkwardly explaining their acoustic bedroom songs on scratchy workinprogress recordings. I’ve been waiting for this debut, basically. The F16’s are jet fighter aircrafts, antibodies against influenza, code for mental and behavioral disorders due to use of hallucinogens, and five guys from Madras (they’re sentimentalists, this is important).
This seven song EP, Kaleidoscope, is such a throwback, and its contents are very telling. There is such a thing as wearing your influences on your sleeve, and this here is it. I’d initially worried about them destroying their quivering acoustic charm, but they turned it around. I really like this EP, but in a guilty pleasure kind of way. Kaleidoscope is like a wellcurated set of music spanning the past decade, you have to like it if you’ve ever spent time listening to their role models. There’s no misremembering, it’s an almost impeccable tribute. There’s a major presence of The Strokes and Arctic Monkeys, and a minor presence of Foals and Two Door Cinema Club. At heart they’re all altrock, almost a light Feeder or a less brawny Theory of A Deadman (I use this as a placeholder, for all the similar faces of this time).
They’ve got great hooks, loud guitars, fitting harmonies, and they obviously sound roomier and fuller. ‘Light Bulbs’, released as a single a few months ago, came as a pleasant repeatfriendly surprise. The F16’s sounded much unlike their anxious acoustic selves, and became more of a Nada Surf resurrection. What stayed intact was their way with words, painting a yellowtinged picture of a despairsoaked bar and isolation carefully placed so you wouldn’t notice unless you stopped to look beyond the happy singalong chorus. There’s a brooding undercurrent to most of the Kaleidoscope EP, and there’s specific imagery. There’s oceanfloor dancing, heavy drinking, crumbling houses, betrayal and then if you look at the elaborate illustrations accompanying each track, there’s war and isolation and mountains and smoke and rooftop parties in abandoned futurecities.
The album opener ‘Prelude’ is like Mutemath meets Foals, and then it segues into Incubus circa 2004 (best year in music this past decade) like an extra mini Movement of the Odyssey. ‘Light Bulbs’ is slowed down upbeat palatable pessimism, I held my breath for ‘Avalanche’ for fear of what it may have become. It works. Deconstruction: That Dirty Projectorslike hook, to The Strokes; somewhere in the middle they fleetingly find their own, before a vocally cringeworthy moment around the three and a half minute mark, right before it drops into a Foalsish segment then ends with a Strokesesque solo. ‘Kings Dream’ is basically ‘Cold Hard Bitch’ with more zealous/purposeful lyrics and a Martin Luther King sample.
‘Who Robbed The Rogue?’ starts with catchy friendly synth a la Two Door Cinema Club and ends in dramatic Muselike fashion. It’s almost my favorite song on the EP but I’m really hoping those lyrics aren’t “Protect your nuts”? This track is followed by carousel music, ‘My Shallow Lover’, about the casual butefficient discarding of adulterous lovers. I like the last track ‘Nuke’, I can’t even stop moving to it, but only because it sounds like a Foals Bside.
There’s nothing jarring or divisive about Kaleidoscope, it’s very easy to like, there’s also nothing particularly inventive. The EP was released at a beach house party, and The F16’s have this amazing DIY thing going. In the space of just about a year, they’ve actually recorded and released an EP, been painstaking and intricate about their illustrations and artwork for each track, building an aesthetic, they’re gigging and touring far more actively/frequently than any of their Chennai compatriots, and I have such high hopes for this band. Once they find their footing, they’re going to be some of the most spectacular alt rock this country has seen.
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