Album Takes: Famous Letter Writer are righteously original and their inside out art punk inspires on "W̶a̶r̶h̶o̶l̶a̶" (official videos 19.99 & Warhola/Warhola)

 

"Now there’s geeks n’ freaks and killing streaks..."

We were promised jetpacks weren't me? We WERE FUCKING PROMISED JETPACKS after all! We were. Every year (for me since 76) we think we are on the precipice of better times scientifically and spiritually, logically, globally, (the whole ball of wax) but always seem to somehow devolve and now we find ourselves in 2020 (in America) with a delusional meglo-narcissist or figment of someone's imagination in Trump, Neanderthal domestic terrorists who call themselves Proud Boys, and fucking Mitch McConnell, a Darth Vader who will not die.

Somehow I felt all this while listening to the amazing askew electro pop dark diorama that is "19.99" by the always delightful and dreamy Famous Letter Writer who feel like a re-birth of 1979-esque proto pop or maybe more accurately proto politico pop. It is not that the songs on their new album "Warhola" are necessarily political but the songs do seem to hold up mirrors. M.I. Devine's lyrical threads made of personal reflections take original punk manifesto tones of his life (with 50's to 80's musical affections and yes, the 50's were fucking punk) and stir them as social commentary about today. Take the wonderfully inside out dream of "All I Do Win" with angelic drones (from his partner in crime - multi-instrumentalist Ru Devine)  and a heartbreaking sense about it as Devine's trembling croon holds sway. There are references to vocal auto-tuning and the Voice with such a sense of dread. Similarly "Cream" has an almost Springsteen-esque blue collar 50's switchblade sensibility. Song's like "7th Grade" shimmies and shakes like a sketchy Tom-Tom Club. Tropical punk pushed through amazing and moving stories. I reviewed "Warhola Warhola" a while back:

"When the track "Warhol/Warhola" by New York based, Famous Letter Writer, washed over me I was a little dumbfounded. I mean, I didn't really understand the curiously shaped words I was hearing sputter from M.I. Devine's proto punk and wonderfully preposterous vocal aesthetic and the head bopping punk whimsical cadence that feels somewhere in between a 1978 punk laboratory experiment and a Mentos commercial made my back straighten up in my chair."

Famous Letter Writer succeeds not only because they are righteously original but because their songs make them feel something. Feeling something while listening to current pop music is hit or miss and that is sad. Those emotions, those images cast either ethereal or vague are sometimes stepped on by derivative elements, musical tropes and cutting grooves. Famous Letter Writer have those grooves too while shooting 16mm movies in your brain that are awe inspiring. 

-Robb Donker Curtius

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New York-based Famous Letter Writer is the indie pop music project of award-winning writer and lyricist M.I. Devine (Warhol's Mother's Pantry) and multi-instrumentalist Ru Devine. Their music is a "cultured brand of indie meta-pop." M.I. brings a hyper-lyricism, ironic and tender, supported by Ru’s minimalist, moving musical architecture, what she calls her “mom pop,” gorgeously layered, catchy anthems that recall John Cale and Brian Eno’s collaborations, pop innocents like Toni Basil and recent synth auteurs like Anna Meredith. Their music conjures Talking Heads, The Strokes, Pulp but especially electro-punk duo Suicide with the vocal energy of Elvis Costello and Jarvis Cocker. Old school and forward-looking, baby.

famousletterwriter.com

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