Les Savy Fav - OUI, LSF (Limited Edition on Blood Bone Vinyl)

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.

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.