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Their first album is one of my favourites of the last decade. Date With The Night, Y Control, Maps, Modern Romance... it's got so many great songs on. It's the soundtrack to the idea of a night-out in downtown New York that I have in my head, the excitement of the subway, walking down the darks streets, past the crackling neon, on the way to a grimey club, then the comedown of sitting in an empty cafe at 3am.
The second album is more poppy, and I haven't listened to it in ages, but I think they achieved what they wanted to do: reign-in the NY hipster-image, and make an album of good songs with strong melodies. I think it's a very likeable album, which is a difficult thing to describe or quantify, but there you go.
I like what I've heard of the new stuff. I don't understand why they couldn't have done most of those synth melodies with an effects-laden guitar though, like the sound they use on Y-Control. It doesn't bother me listening to it at home but I wonder how it will fit-in with the other songs when performed live.
I don't understand why people think their generic. Each album sounds different, and even their first one, which had them lumped together by NME with all the other 'The-' bands, is distinct: more distorted and louder yet more romantic and varied than The Strokes or whatever. I can't expect all die-hard Merzbow fans to like them, but it's exactly my kind of music anyway.
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