Times New Viking: "No Time, No Hope"

I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that Times New Viking thought it was more of a noise act than a pop band, and the band’s insistence that they were just a “pop band” playing “pop songs” never rang particularly sincere. It seems coy, reductive.

It’s not that big ear-wriggling melodies don’t grace each of TNV’s albums, including the recent Born Again Revisited. But after crafting a beautiful guitar line or keyboard run, the band just can’t seem to hold itself back from simply fucking with any semblance of being on a similar wavelength during recording. There are, of course, perils that come with turning up to ten and sticking a shitty microphone in a musty basement to commit a song to tape, but the happy accidents that stem from this method outnumber the pitfalls. Thus, “No Time, No Hope” slides into side one as a glimmer of precious pop amongst seven other jolting tracks, sequenced as if designed to scare away any new listeners expecting a new leaf turned on an album the band claims is a quarter less lo-fi than Rip It Off (2008). So though pop might win out on “No Time, No Hope,” it returns home bruised and bloodied as TNV revel in limbo between beauty and beast.

The ear-chiseling tools of yore all remain—guitar, keyboard, drums—and TNV isn’t attempting to mop up any of its spilled sound on “No Time, No Hope.” However, TNV strikes a compromise on the track with a sneaky trick, namely hooking listeners with one of those “I’ve heard this before” riffs that’s ingrained in the human brain at birth, before diving into riff-busting joy and not giving a splattered brain what’s at the bottom. While alternating the title’s refrain with abstract despondency (“Feel like a tourist outside,” “We don’t have the same voice”), the elated cries of Adam Elliot and Beth Murphy rise above the din to give a tangled sense of hope within the “No Hope,” and the song stumbles to a halt, leaving listeners breathless, battered, and feeling better than they did three minutes before.