Driver of the Year: Driver of the Year Will Destroy You

Driver of the Year
Driver of the Year Will Destroy You
Nail in the Coffin
2007-07-24

Finally: the indie-rock sex album. No, literally. Here is an album that is meant to be blasted out of a Bose mini-stereo while juxtaposed with your lover in lusty abandon. The album’s makers, Driver of the Year, have no problem with this: they even wrote original songs for a porno called Dana DeArmond Does the Internet. Yet a night with Driver of the Year is a night of incredibly average drunken sex. “Teenage Kicks”, the opening track of …Will Destroy You (their third album) brings your mind to a candle-lit bedroom where saving grace is all the burning incense — and not much else. “Barely Legal” is as felonious as its title, riding tired grooves over a climax that sounds totally fake. However, under all the wash-heavy synths, we hear guitarists Seth Knappen and Jason Parris wanting to bust out like a strip-club version of Sonic Youth, working best on the indie-leaning “Night Receiver”. The excellent “Girlfriend is Better” is the sound of Maroon 5’s “Makes Me Wonder” rearranged for sloppy second-lovin’ (making it — automatically — better than the original). The group has a lot of potential, but the more their minds are out of the gutter, the more exciting the songs sound.

RATING 6 / 10