death
‘Numbers is not the easiest of bands to describe. It is somewhere between Sick Lipstick, Versus and quirkier Pixies songs. It is dance music, a musical language in which I hope never to be fluently versed.
The club beats of Numbers albums are one notch below the pop cutoff mark, preventing the advertising department of Volkswagen from being all over this band. As a fortunate side effect of not being pop, not all of the drum beats go “thump thump thump,” like the car stereo installation department of, say, Circuit City. Not every progression attacks like the first wave of some airborne military division of headache-givers. But, some do. It’s an unfortunate truth of writing music for people to do the arhythmical train-wreck type of white-people dancing that gets done to this music.
Pitchfork described bands such as Numbers as: “obviously summer vacation hobbies for moderately wealthy college students gone pro, doing their dressing-to-be-clever impersonations of a late-’70s heyday they’ve been told really mattered.”
Although humorous, the description may not be totally accurate. The heyday of the late ’70s didn’t really matter.
“Death” rates much higher than “Life” in this instance. “Death,” the remix album, including tracks from Numbers’ previous album “Life,” is done justice by the likes of Kid606, Electronicat and Kit Clayton. The songs are innovative and unique takes on the original versions.
Numbers is most likely not done justice on record. Anything electronic, dance, or drum and bass is best heard live.
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