Les Savy Fav Share ‘World Got Great’ Single
Les Savy Fav | Photo Credit: Press
Les Savy Fav returns today to share their next single from upcoming LP OUI, LSF, due out May 10th. ‘World Got Great’ is a guitar-driven anthem, that comes paired with a delightfully animated music video. The track is sing-along inducing, and the video, directed by Emmy-award winning Jimbo Matison, leaves you smiling, because who but Les Savy Fav would defeat world-ending monsters with tickle fights and flower power?
"Everything is so computer generated now, nothing seems sincere", remarks Matison. "I wanted raw materials and simple ideas to do the talking. We also wanted to have a good time while making this, so why not get back to 1st grader basics? Can we make a video with cardboard, crayons, and a phone? Hell yeah, we can."
Listen/watch & share: Les Savy Fav - ‘World Got Great’ Stream | YouTube
"Did we buy a $4.99 bubble machine at the dollar store? Yeah, it lasted for about 30 minutes which was just enough time to shoot what was needed. That thing pumped mad bubbles while it worked," he continues. "Can you see cat hair on the closeups? Absolutely. We are a little embarrassed by that, but hey, Skipper is a rad cat and we love him. The finale may look familiar as Fruity Pebbles were used as the colour scheme. It's a vibrant coloured cardboard explosion. Does this video look 'out of the box'? No. Is it boring? No. Mission accomplished."
It’s impossible to talk about Les Savy Fav without acknowledging that it’s been more than 10 years since the guys released 2010’s Root for Ruin. But it’s not like they had a messy breakup or quit to become bankers. They just had a lot of living to do. “When we finished our last record, there was a sense that if we were going to do more, we wanted to do something more ambitious,” Harrington says. “I think it took us a while to even get in a space where that was possible.” Remember, these five men — Harrington, Seth Jabour, Syd Butler, Harrison Haynes, Andrew Reuland — have been friends and collaborators since 1995, when they attended Rhode Island School of Design. It takes a beat to shake old habits.
In the interim, the band has been busy building growing their families, taking and losing jobs, and living through the various ecstatic and hideous aspects of growing older. Harrington wrote and illustrated children’s books (like 2015’s Noes to Toes You are Yummy), ran out of money, built his attic studio, wrestled with mental health issues, and got a job-job as a creative director. Butler continued to run his label, Frenchkiss (which released the majority of the band’s albums, including this one), and, along with Jabour, honed his writing skills as a member of Seth Meyers’ 8G band. Harrison left his career teaching to focus on fine art, while Reuland built a reputation as a film/commercial editor and writer on Adult Swim’s cult show Ballmastrz: 9009. That onslaught of personal ambitions and adulting could spell death for many bands, but, as Harrington puts it: “The band was never a job, so we can’t get fired and don’t have to quit. We had the time to figure out how to bring the people we’ve become and the people we are as artists together authentically. There’s a chaotic, untethered ecstasy at the centre of the band’s universe. Squaring that with the desire to create stability and the need to endure some grind isn’t easy.”
Over the years, the band has continued to perform, always on their own terms, but after a stint at Primavera in 2022, they caught the proverbial songwriting bug once more, sharing demos, jamming in Harrington’s attic, and recording through the heap of DIY and esoteric gear Harrington collected over the last decade. At first, there was no intention of recording an album; they were playing music, not writing it. “The last record was a lot about holding on. OUI, LSF is the sound of release — no map, no preconceptions, no self-righteous certainty,” Butler says. “There's nothing like hitting 50 to slap the cocksure vanity off your face.” That’s not to say it was easy. The challenge of learning a new way to write and work together took a lot of letting go. Among the artwork that plasters the attic studio is a piece by Harrington that reads, “Can’t do it how you want. Don’t want to do it how you can,” spiralling into a bloodshot eye. “I put it there as a warning about how easily that fixation can paralyse you,” he says.
The resulting album is a glorious mix of tragedy and comedy — studded with nods to the band’s eclectic musical taste — delightfully weird and utterly them. Album opener ‘Guzzle Blood’ crashes us into the record like a runaway cop car, setting the tone for the rest of the 14-song suite. “It opens with just a total disillusion — a loss of faith, frustration, anguish,” Harrington says of the song, which speaks of demons haunting your sleep and the battle for salvation.
In addition to their slew of upcoming shows in Europe, Les Savy Fav have announced a handful of dates across the U.S. in the early summer. They are also slated to play Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago on July 21. Find more information and tickets here
LES SAVY FAV LIVE
May 16 - Brooklyn, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg
May 24 - Dublin, IRE - Whelans
May 25 - Leeds, UK - Brudenell Social Club
May 26 - South Derbyshire, UK - Bearded Theory
May 28 - Barcelona, ESP - Primavera Sound
June 28 - Washington, DC - Black Cat
June 29 - Philadelphia, PA - Union Transfer
June 30 - Somerville, MA - Arts at the Armory
July 12 - Portland, OR - Revolution Hall
July 13 - Seattle, WA - Day in Day Out
July 21 - Chicago, IL - Pitchfork Music Festival
Aug 3 - Katowice, PL - OFF Festival
Les Savy Fav
Oui, LSF
Out May 10th on Frenchkiss Records
Pre-Order
1. Guzzle Blood
2. Limo Scene
3. Void Moon
4. Mischief Night
5. What We Don’t Don’t Want
6. Legendary Tippers
7. Dawn Patrol
8. Somebody Needs A Hug
9. Racing Bees
10. Don’t Mind Me
11. Oi! Division
12. Barbs
13. Nihilists
14. World Got Great
Les Savy Fav bio:
Almost out of necessity, Les Savy Fav’s sixth LP was born in a pocket reality: singer Tim Harrington’s Brooklyn attic. “A freaky barn,” as he calls it, the room was built over the ruins of black mold and plywood, a de facto studio. Different from anywhere they’d ever recorded, the space allowed for a much-needed rebirth for the long-running post-hardcore band. In that in-between, they pieced together what would become their latest evolution, OUI, LSF, growing the album’s title and cover art out of a patch of grass. “The record grew organically — literally and figuratively,” Harrington notes wryly.
It’s impossible to talk about Les Savy Fav’s latest without acknowledging that it’s been more than 10 years since the guys released 2010’s Root for Ruin. But it’s not like they had a messy breakup or quit to become bankers. They just had a lot of living to do. “When we finished our last record, there was a sense that if we were going to do more, we wanted to do something more ambitious,” Harrington says. “I think it took us a while to even get in a space where that was possible.” In the interim, the band has been busy building growing their families, taking and losing jobs, and living through the various ecstatic and hideous aspects of growing older. Remember, these five men — Harrington, Seth Jabour, Syd Butler, Harrison Haynes, Andrew Reuland — have been friends and collaborators since 1995, when they attended Rhode Island School of Design.
The resulting album is a glorious mix of tragedy and comedy — studded with nods to the band’s eclectic musical taste — delightfully weird and utterly them, tripping from ghostly bops to ruminations on love and loss to some seriously debauched and crazy nights. A decade may have passed, but Les Savy Fav is still growing — like their musical range, like the seeds that grew into their album art, like their legacy.
Here’s to 10 more years of delicious lunacy.
