Human Television 'Look At Who You’re Talking To' album

"Did it kick in yet?" asks Human Television frontman Billy Downing, as a wicker chair begins to collapse below us in his bedroom/pseudo studio. Well, let's see. An amateur Picasso painting of belligerent brushstrokes and hidden Mardi Gras masks appears to be popping off one wall like a Magic Eye print. (Downing discovered it in a Brooklyn trash heap and deemed it appropriate album art for Human Television's new LP. We couldn't agree more.) And the hollowed-out eyes plastered across a nearby Siamese Dream poster seem to be expanding and contracting ever so subtly. So, yeah, something kicked in.

"This looks like a 15-year-old's room doesn't it? The Nirvana poster over there just completes the look." He's right, really. The place is so claustrophobic and crowdedcomplete with a messy bed, minimal clothing and an amp/electric guitar/Big Black Roland 606 drum machine combo propped against a windowyou'd think some junior high Elliott Smith successor lived here. Not some anomalous, pensive 24-year-old from South Florida who's really into Black Tambourine, the entire Creation Records discography and, considering the sound of the new song piping into our ears from his iPod, Joy Division. "I'm Moving On" begins as a dismal guitar loop before detonating in an ominous dust cloud of arena rock riffs and reverb-doused vocals that suggest absolute desperation. Downing leans forward on his bed and spins the iPod's volume wheel to the max. The combination of a numb narrator and complete cacophony is actually quite debilitatingenough for us to ask him to turn it off. To think, the whole thing is built around a few simple guitar chords and a shifting bass line, like "Sweet Jane" and every twisted pop track penned before and after it.

"On paper, it sounds horrendous, but if you can just hit one note and change around that one constant thing, it's amazing," says Downing. "The trick is in the layering: You get all the parts talking to one another." A similar feat carries "Untitled," a seasick combination of sterile drum machine patterns, vocals that were muddled and mangled through a guitar amp and tremolo effects, and guitars that switch from a swirling soft acoustic to a towering mess of Melvins-like fuzz tones.

Admittedly, this is a somewhat misleading introduction to Human Television's debut LP, Look At Who You're Talking To. Musically, much of it is a refined recollection of their previous EP, All Songs Written By: Human Television.
Which means a compact package of purified pop songs (the taut leadoff single "I Laughed," the carnival castle buoyancy of "Such a Trip") and melodies that jingle, jangle, and burrow their way into your brain like a cyst. Comparisons are unnecessary but expected, so we won't blame you if you're thinking lo-fi Rickenbacker rock!' or Œthese guys must dig The Wedding Present' again from time to time. Hell, Downing was so amused by the parallels drawn between the pair in previous Human Television reviews that he posted, "A lot of people say we rip you guys off," on The Wedding Present's Myspace page.

"At least it's disco beat free," says Downing, smiling slightly maniacally. "We checked. It's cheating to do that."

If nothing else??, the vocalist/guitarist hopes to expose fans to the music that's informed Human Television since they cut their first demo in the winter of 2002 ("Saw You Walking By" as played by Guided By Voices and produced by Aphex Twin). That means the classics (New Order, The Smiths, Phil Spector, R.E.M.) as much as it means their long forgotten, but equally talented, contemporaries (Orange Juice, the back catalogue of Sarah and Factory Records). All buoyed by the deceivingly simple, interlocking backbeat of three good friends from South Florida (now relocated to Philadelphia and New York City): Rubber ball bassist Richard Davis, counterpoint guitarist/vocalist Boyd Shropshire, and drummer Mario Pel Lopez (also the band's mid-fi videographer and drummer for the Lilys).

"It is what it is," insists Downing. "I wrote this album as if I might not write another album again. It can be as little or as much as you want it to be."

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Human Television - Look At Who You’re Talking To