THE NEW VITAMIN
The last musical artist I can recall that had ‘vitamin’ in their moniker was probably Vitamin C, the weird girl with the orange hair… you remember- she had that catchy but annoying graduation song like 10 years ago? Well even if you don’t remember it’s okay, because The New Vitamin is the total antithesis of that… She was one girl- they are five guys. She produced saccharine pop- they make hard-hitting electro-indie rock. She’s from New Jersey (which is my home state so I guess that’s remotely cool). They hail from Vienna, Austria. Am I going far too in-depth here with the comparisons to a flash-in-the-pan late-90’s pop starlet? Yeah. But I think there’s a method to my madness: these guys are far from a flash in the pan.
Take ‘Say!’, their latest single. It’s got bits of Bloc Party (the vocals have a hint of Kele Okereke to them) and The Clash, building very quickly on droning guitar riffs and propulsive New Wave-y dance-drums. I will admit that most of the time I have absolutely no idea what lead vocalist Vitamin J is actually saying, but that hasn’t stopped me from listening to this track at least a dozen times, and singing what I think are the lyrics. I also just noticed that a Vitamin C also apparently plays bass guitar for the group, but I kind of doubt it’s the same one that wrote that graduation song. Whoever it is, they are really laying down a solid groove. And I love how the track ends, in a wash of sustain and slight guitar feedback.
0 comments: