Led Er Est - 'The Diver'

LED ER EST
The Diver

Sacred Bones, 2012

• FAVORITES:

  "Kaiyo Maru” “Divided Parallel” “The Diver”

• COMPLETE THE LOOK:

  Clove cigarettes, skinny ties, generic SSRI prescriptions

RATING:

TRACK LIST:

• Animal Smear
• Housefire at Zumi's
• Kaiyo Maru
• The Diver
• Bladiator
• Agua Fuerte
• Arab Tide
• Divided Parallel
• Iron the Mandala
• La Lluvia y Memoria
• Sanetta

You know how everybody was put on earth to do one thing, and only some of us get to discover what that one thing is, and some of us just don’t, ever? Like, maybe you’re secretly really good at surfing but you grew up in Iowa so you’d never know and your whole life will be one big disa-fucking-ppointment? If your purpose in life was to make a certain kind of slightly fucked up dark pop music, then you might be in Led Er Est, hurtling towards your life’s work.

The Diver is really cool, but it’s not hip. These guys aren't trying to convince you to get into them. It’s not pandering. They’re doing this really specific thing, which is to push past this coldwave minimalist techno revival vogue and prove that it’s actually just a way to make compelling music. This seems at first like a genre piece, which it’s not. There’s enough gravitas here to warrant repeated listening, which the record deserves. It’s sad but not too sad. Dark but not desperate. It’s indoor fun at it’s almost best.

This is probably not supposed to blow everyone’s mind. If you get it, then you get it. Maybe that sounds snobby. I could see someone stumbling across this record and becoming a convert. It’s catchy, it’s deep. It’s just not everyone’s piece of cake, thank god, and it doesn’t have to be. I like Joy Division. I like Bauhaus. I like all that coldwave minimalist shit. Those guys have cute haircuts and clean apartments and their girlfriends always let you bum cigarettes. It’s totally older-sibling-home-from-college music. Led Er Est knows what they’re doing. They know what kind of sound they want and they’ve pretty much got it. This isn’t a masterwork, there’s a bit of searching around, but for the most part the songs are well thought-out. It doesn’t show off, though. It’s polite. It’s just this side of condescending.