February 21, 2008

The Boggs

Forts

7 / 10 From Foals to Vampire Weekend to Morgan from DIOYY’s new project Plugs, suddenly you can’t chuck a djembe through hipsterland without hitting someone describing themselves as ‘Afrobeat’. The Boggs’ spiky haircuts and tight trousers found them swept up with The Strokes’ New York, despite the fact that their 2002 debut largely comprised swampy ’30s bluegrass. They return with a lead track (‘Forts’) that’s a percussive Afrobeating, zinging along with glassy menace. Songwriter Jason Friedman’s roots have broadened into a pallate now almost uncategorisably wide. ‘Little Windows’ treats Buddy Holly’s ‘Peggy Sue’ as a canvas over which to dub folk in much the same way that hip-hoppers might sample
its DNA. The greatest irony is that the production’s so chilly and condensed that their obscure folk influences find them randomly intersecting with what’s fashionable.

Gavin Haynes

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