Reptar: Body Faucet

Reptar: Body Faucet
On Body Faucet, the unfortunately named Reptar deliver the season’s first essential barbecue soundtrack with an album that suggests their potential to be the next bearers of the Athens, Georgia torch carried by such legends as R.E.M., B-52s and the mighty Vic Chesnutt. These are hard – and musically disparate – acts to follow, but that doesn’t matter because Reptar takes a different approach, putting dreamy keyboards, bass, and drums before to any guitar jangle. Reptar channels African music as imagined by Vampire Weekend and Paul Simon’s Graceland, evoking energy and warmth to the degree that it begs the question whether Reptar’s sound might owe more to the Georgia heat than the music of their Athens progenitors. Their press materials make allusions to a self-assigned mandate of musical exploration. They deliver. Though Body Faucet has designs on the dance floor from the album’s opening and doesn’t let up for the whole of its one-hour running time, the songs are dense enough, both musically and lyrically, to qualify as think pieces as well. The sonic playfulness and percussive fluidity of Reptar’s sound is best embodied in “Natural Bridge,” a song whose traditional pop structure is interrupted not only by a synthy laser battle, but also a monster-voiced sidebar with singer Graham Ulicny’s sense of self-doubt. Body Faucet could be a blue print for the proper full-length debut. It’s ambitious enough to raise questions about where the band will go in the future, but so fully-realized that it will stand on it’s own if Reptar (such an unfortunate name) doesn’t put out another album.
Rating: 8.0/10
MP3: Reptar “Natural Bridge”
Buy: iTunes or Insound! vinyl