Rating: 5.5/10
It should be no surprise that any band claiming to belong, or righteously belonging, to the garage revival chunk of these last years will, as time goes by, embody no less than a penny in a slot machine. To kick things off, I should clarify that the Capitol Years are no different than the Mooney Suzuki or the Warlocks - or even the Strokes, to raise more than a couple of eyebrows - in that every two tracks, they mimic.
There’s no use in elaborating on my resistance to most garage revivalist bands (the Walkmen should always be mentioned as a clear exception), so let me put it this way: most of them seem to have picked an era and chosen to live there forever.
Therefore, most songs from the Capitol Years’ first true full-length sound no stronger to me than if they were hit by a reversing truck (and no, Morrissey’s words about dying by her/his side, after being hit by a double-decker, and that being “such a heavenly way to die” do not apply here). Let Them Drink’s first two songs speak to the attention deficit disorder in each one of us; they send us into a head spin, but just when we were all crossing our fingers - thinking it’s about time they added insult to injury - their music proves to be plain and harmless.
Throughout the rest of the 40-minute album, these Philly folks maintain a cool poise while playing risibly at moderate volume. At times choosing to travel faster than the speed of comprehension, they cast a shadow on their musical skills, which seem to disappear as suddenly as they arrived. Jeff Van Newkirk’s guitar, for example, gets tossed into a river of foaming harmonies, the sort that cleanse any dirty material that could have erupted and heightened their performance.
And therein lies their biggest problem: the Capitol Years create a trap for themselves - like a two-way spectrum between whirled harmonies and heavier clusters - and can’t find their way out of that maze. On the other hand, on tracks like “Ramona” or even “Everyone Is a Skunk,” with their ascending or descending power chords, feel like a sombre wizard showed up and left a stain - like a blessed splash of ink - in the otherwise void sound-mantra. Needless to say, these are the best cuts taken from Let Them Drink. Every other hot-fingered guitar interlude lacks a grain of salt or two. To put matters briefly, although they do show some potential, the Capitol Years do not rightfully deserve the hype they are getting.
http://www.lostatsea.net/review.phtml?id=31807272431c337236816
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