Album Of The Week: Free Energy Love Sign

Rock critics aren't really expected to be forecasters of popular taste. And thank fuck for that, because I'm goddam terrible at it. The one time I ever wrote anything for Gawker, here's what I told them: "First things first: This Asher Roth album is going to sell. Sorry, kids... My guess is he sells 300K in his first week, at least. If a second single manages to stick, he'll go platinum, easy." Nope! In 2009, I saw the Rural Alberta Advantage play a SXSW showcase with Veckatimest-era Grizzly Bear and pre-Album Girls, and I walked away thinking to myself that the Rural Alberta Advantage were going to be huge. Nope! I mention these failure of prognostication because I've never been quite as certain of anything as I was that Free Energy were going to be a band that seized the popular imagination, shook it around, didn't let go. Another SXSW night, I heard Free Energy's "Bang Pop" for the first time, saw them bang it out directly in front of my face, and I resigned myself to the fact that I'd hear it 50 bazillion more times. That one actually did come to pass, but only because I fucking love that song and I keep playing it. It wasn't a hit. Their really great debut album Stuck On Nothing wasn't a hit. And now that they've got a new album, Love Sign, James Murphy isn't producing them anymore, and they're no longer on DFA. They're self-releasing the album. I don't know what happened. It shouldn't have happened.