Neu Thao & The Get Down Stay Down

Thao Nguyen’s new full-length ‘We The Common’ is a lesson in the art of inventive folk-pop.

Words: Jamie Milton
2nd December 2012

Name

: Thao & the Get Down Stay Down
Based: San Francisco
Listen: ‘Holy Roller’
Similar to: tUnE-yArDs, Bill Callahan

Thao Nguyen’s story is lengthier than a new band piece can elaborate on. Her new full-length proper ‘We The Common’ is the first we’ll be seeing on these shores; a fully realised work that does indeed suggest it has several predecessors. Though purposefully disjointed and obtuse, and laced with experimentalism, you sense this is a sound that’s been refined and perfected over the past few years. With a dense background forms a record of assured maturity.

Nguyen’s voice is delicate and sweet to the point of bordering on tweeness, but it’s her band’s complex arrangements that lend this new record a source of intrigue. Though lead track ‘Holy Roller’ revels in immediacy and has “6 music playlist” embedded in its centre, it’s a strange beast, up there with Merrill Garbus’ boastful sonic achievements under tUnE-yArDs. It aims to be something far beyond pleasant folk, and for the most part it succeeds spectacularly.

‘We The Common’ get a UK release on 4th February 2013. Stream ‘Holy Roller’ below: