The Morning News

Listening • Waiting for the Right Move

Less than a month has passed since up-and-coming Austin act VEGA, who were pretty well-received at SXSW earlier this year, allegedly stole Crystal Castles’s guitar pedal, and yet we’re all just barely getting over the conflict. Two full weeks later, the questions that remain are still gnawing at us, like, “Crystal Castles plays guitars?” and, “Don’t you mean—as Teen Vogue so adroitly reports—one of those other ‘crystal’ bands, one better known for playing guitars?” and, “Are you sure? Because I was under the impression that Crystal Castles was just a guy who played 8-bit stuff through computers and a chick who yelled stuff over it?”

Well, as hard as it is to believe that one of our fleeting hipster-centric interests (the Castles being so 2008) which is still pretty cool to listen to while riding the train and also has a cute/insane frontwoman can have stooped to such low, self-important, hipster-centric-hype-of-last-year tactics, the band VEGA, who allegedly stole their precious guitar pedal, is coming out of the whole fracas seeming like an unfortunately beleagured set of polite, underdoggedly good guys. In anticipation of their debut EP, Well Known Pleasures (obviously a direct answer to Joy Division’s more cryptically titled debut album), the band has released their first single, “No Reasons.” The song is a very retro, sunny take on 90s club music, which means it may be heralding a revival of the genre, cyclical as these things tend to go. While the merits of such a revival are extensively debatable, VEGA’s bellwether is perfectly innocuous and fairly infectious, and the people over at Gorilla Vs. Bear are calling it a contender for “summer jam ‘09,” which everyone knows is the most coveted title in music each year. Good luck, contestants. —Erik Bryan, May. 6, 2009

» Listen to "No Reasons" at Gorilla Vs. Bear

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