Louis XIV



Another hotly hyped act this year is San Diego's garage punk rockers Louis XIV. I heard a couple of tracks around the blogosphere and decided to pick up their just-released-this-week debut LP The Best Little Secrets Are Kept. It's a completely derivative yet enormously entertaining set of rock & roll tunes that incorporates a hefty dose of vintage Rolling Stones, a giant dollop of glam rock (particularly of the T.Rex variety), some punk rock and the quirky, sexy oddness of a band like Mink Lungs - many of the lyrical snippets I caught brought a smile to my face. I've only listened to this LP 3 or 4 times, so I can't give a really accurate review of it, but I do know that I like what I hear a lot. It's infectiously catchy, it flat out rocks, and it's got some really nice production touches - I particularly love all of the orchestrated string bits and the massed choral vocals on several tracks. Hey Teacher has a knock-out riff that is played by both a guitar and the strings, and it floors me every time - OK, I really dig the handclaps too. A enjoyably trashy, glammy pop nugget.