Throwback Thursday #2 - The Virgins record review
Originally published by The Spill Magazine in June, 2008.
I’m pretty sure this is the first thing I ever wrote for a publication that wasn’t a friend’s blog or run by a school I was attending. Because of this emotional connection, I’m one of the very few people who still listens to The Virgins. This makes sense because this debut album did terribly with critics, and even though Atlantic Records made a big effort to get these guys out there, booking sets at all the big festivals like Lollapalooza and Glastonbury, The Virgins never really took off. Apparently one of their songs was featured on The OC, which gave them a bit of a popularity boost as well but I’m sure most people reading this won’t have any idea what the hell The OC was. I think at the time they just felt too much like a trendy major label band capitalizing on a popular sound, and they were, but this is still a really solid record.
In 2013 singer Donald Cumming would return with a new backing band for The Virgins’ sophomore LP, but that iteration didn’t last longer than a year. Cumming would go on to release a solo record that received a warm reception from critics in 2015 but fizzled out publicly. John Eatherly and Xan Aird, hired guns for the second Virgins record, formed the equally great band Public Access TV, which gained some real popularity in the UK but disbanded in 2019.
The following review was originally published in 2008.
The Virgins’ principal members Donald Cumming and Wade Oates were models on a photo shoot when they met and decided to start playing songs together. This, along with their unabashed pastiche of re-popularized post-punk styles have garnered many knee jerk reactions comparing them to another New York band of recent years, and indeed “Radio Christiane” off their self- titled debut LP does channel The Cars via The Strokes.
This should not however be seen as a negative trait, as the tendency of other current and trendy sounding bands to phone in performances for effect (or perhaps out of lack of talent) is completely absent in the Virgins. The song writing is strong and varied, creating a mixtape quality that can often sound messy in lesser hands but works in this case. This is largely due to the solid rhythm section of Erik Ratensperger and Nick Zarin-Ackerman who are as adept at the mid-tempo balladry of closer “Love is Colder Than Death” as they are at the rhythmic stop-start funk of “Murder”.
The Virgins are also no strangers to melody and lyricism in spite of their seemingly party-ready instrumentation. “Fernando Pando” in particular seems genuine and heartfelt in way that is immediately familiar and anything but disposable with sentiments such as “The kids I used to know they died/Well they’re not around/I wonder what they think of life/When they’re looking down”.
A strong first effort from a promising young band, The Virgins will not disappoint anyone looking for a strong pop album that would be at just as home alone in their bedroom as it would be at their next party.