Smile Politely. Speak Directly. A Champaign-Urbana Culture Blog

On Wednesday night, Times New Viking, one of the two bands I’m most looking forward to at this year’s Pygmalion Festival, will bring their fuzzed out rock to the Canopy Club. Based out of Columbus, Ohio, Times New Viking are Beth Murphy on keyboards and vocals, Adam Elliot on drums and vocals and Jared Phillips on guitar. Their high energy sound is loud, raw and in the red with pop sensibilities bleeding through the fuzz. Aesthetically, Times New Viking’s songs hearken back to the lo-fidelity recording of the early 90s utilized in the early recordings of Guided by Voices, Pavement and a plethora of New Zealand bands. It’s no coincidence that the recently revitalized Siltbreeze label issued Times New Vikings’ first two releases. In the 90s, Siltbreeze put out records by lo-fi/no-fi noise rock artists such as Shadow Ring, Harry Pussy, The Dead C, The Yips (also from Columbus) and Tower Recordings.

The 16 songs on Times New Viking’s most recent full-length, Rip It Off, released on Matador at the beginning of 2008, captures the band’s fuzzy pop charm, Swell Map’s weirdness and Wire’s ability to pack a lot of songs into a short time frame. The group has a five-song 7” coming out October 7 on Matador.

Times New Viking headlines the Wednesday show at Canopy with Common Loon, Mute Era, Coco Coca, Elsinore and Decibully. A friend of mine who caught Times New Viking this summer at the Pitchfork Festival was impressed that the band gave it their all even though they were playing at noon on a Sunday. Here’s hoping we’ll get the same on Wednesday night.

Doors open at 9:30 p.m., the show starts at 10:30 p.m. and tickets are 10 bones.

(Ed. Note — Full Disclosure: A founding member of Smile Politely also produces Pygmalion Music Festival.)

Here's a video of Times New Viking playing "Thing With the Hook" from a live show late last year.