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| Pastemagazine |
 It begins with a threat, bare and ominous. “If this is how you want it / Okay, okay,” Thao Nguyen and a seething chorus of friends howl on the first track of her third LP, just before the song bursts into a cacophony of righteous hand claps bearing along the line’s portentous fury. Repeated four times, each time it becomes more clear: This girl is pissed. And she has a posse. And whoever the guy is that sparked this collection of reeling post-breakup songs, he had better brace himself.She’s doing more than airing some unsuspecting ex’s dirty laundry: Unleashing lyrics like “What am I, just a body in your bed? / Won’t you reach for that body in your bed?” on the crippling “Body,” Nguyen proves she hardly needs a clothesline to string up any fella that crosses her (and also that she acknowledges her own guilt in the matter). No, it’s even more devastating—all those failures and regrets and sad, private moments made public in a magnificent musical catharsis....full text |
| Dustedmagazine |
| Thao with The Get Down Stay Down - "When We Swam" (Know Better Learn Faster) The moments of oldness and of the past that are particularly striking in Thao and the Get Down Stay Down’s new album Know Better Learn Faster are interesting when you know the wider social context. In these days of financial crisis and social instability, when all the old structures and methodologies are leaking at an incredibly accelerated rate, a certain nostalgia has been thematically creeping into culture. It’s not that musicians are specifically referencing this by looking back – though perhaps some most certainly consciously do – but rather that they, like writers and visual artists and everyday people, are inadvertently reflecting the larger cultural trends, simply by being participating members in that culture. The abject failure of neo-liberal and free market based capitalism and the way it’s decimated society for the past 40 years is a massive problem that weighs on everyone’s mind. Perhaps as a consolation prize of sorts, it’s made us a bit introspective – in an honest and humble way – and focused us on the modern beginning of this mess, the 1950s and early 1960s. This turn also makes sense musically. The 1980s have been exhausted by the ironic day-glo miners and the late ‘60 and 1970s have been thoroughly excavated by everyone else. This isn’t to say that everyone involved in the post-modern nostalgia project is doing this cynically, but simply that once those eras were kind of used up, it makes sense that people would start investigating music from before the big cultural shift of the ‘60s. Yo La Tengo’s turn towards ‘50s rock, R&B and northern soul, Stuart Murdoch’s new project God Help the Girl, and Thao and the Get Down Stay Down all make a lot of sense when seen in this light. What’s appealing about Know Better is not simply this nostalgic sensibility, but also the way in which that sensibility manifests itself as the music of the ‘50s plays off against the other styles that emerge out of their music, most predominantly, dance-punk. There’s never a sense that this is forced, either. Just like when Yo La Tengo moved in this direction, it seemed natural – natural to the point where it was almost expected – and for Nguyen, it’s the same feeling. Their various styles are integrated and naturally came out of the way the Get Down Stay Down coalesced. Without knocking any specific band – and each person can certainly grasp out into the world and retrieve her own favorite example – there are certainly a lot affectations out there. Bands like trying on styles regardless of whether it organically emerges from their own life circumstances, and it’s really nice to find bands like Nguyen’s where the style is nostalgic but never insincere....full text |
| Popmatters |
| In early 2009 the venerable Kill Rock Stars was once again rewarded for good taste when Thao Nguyen’s much lauded second album became the label’s best seller of 2008. If that album, We Brave Bee Stings and All, was taking a playful distance on growing pains to adulthood, Thao & Co.‘s third album, Know Better, Learn Faster, is a creative, catchy, and often ironically emotive reflection on the timeless theme “love hurts.” It’s all in the title, as Thao explains on the Kill Rock Stars page for the album: “The album is named Know Better Learn Faster because you can’t. By the time you realize you should, it’s too late.” The tragedy of human love. Thao’s last album has been described as playful, and KBLF is possibly even more so. Most of this album is instrumentally upbeat, which belies the anger, frustration, melancholy and loss that imbue its lyrics. Nguyen launches the track “Easy” with the statement, “Sad people dance too”. That line perfectly captures the ethos of this unassumingly seductive album, simultaneously groove-ridden and melancholic. Indeed, several danceable tracks have a funk riff reminiscent of Modest Mouse, Cold War Kids, and Spoon (coincidentally, the album was produced by Grammy-nominated Tucker Martine, who has worked with Spoon). It’s a special feat they’ve accomplished. Think of their company: the Smiths’ “Girlfriend in a Coma” was hilariously ironic and given to sing-alongs, but danceable? While part of the irony of this album stems from the relationship between lyrics and instrumental accompaniment, it also stems from Nguyen’s vocal style, which has a certain childish quality about it, resulting in some songs having a slight similarity to nursery rhymes. This is nowhere more evident than in the opening slow dance funk of “When We Swam”. The comparisons with Chan Marshall will continue on this record (perhaps especially on “Trouble Was For”, as her voice climbs to a higher note with each of those title words). However, on the faster songs, such as “Body”, Nguyen displays a funked vocal style perhaps closest to Modest Mouse’s Issac Brock, alternating with a tone and pitch not far from the distinctive whine-sing of Clap Your Hands’ Alec Ounsworth. Despite the pleasant echoes, she is no imitation....full text |
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