On the road with d: The Virgins

Annie's interview with André Anjos of RAC last week reminded me that I wanted to talk about The Virgins, whose new album I've been listening to a bit recently. The Virgins are a New York City-based band formed in 2005. Frontman Donald Cummings and guitarist Wade Oates met on a photo shoot. They became friends with Nick Zarin-Ackerman and met final member Erik Ratensperger when they were auditioning for a drummer.

I'd really been looking forward to the LP (released June 3) after hearing the EP that they released last year. They released that EP back then because they wanted something to give out on tour and they didn't have enough songs properly recorded to make a full length album.

The new album is full of fun danceable rock with a taste of funk and disco. Their songs don't cover much ground lyrically focusing on the rock staples of girls, sex, and drugs, but the songs themselves make up for it permeated with brash energy and fun choruses while maintaining a catchy groove throughout.

The version of Rich Girls that appears on site is actually the version from the EP. When I was first listening to the new album, I was actually caught a bit off guard because I hadn't realized that the songs on the EP had been noticeably redone. For instance, my favorite thing about Rich Girls off the EP had been its fun bass line and this was in fact the most noticeably changed aspect of the song. In the earlier version, the bass line is repeated a lot more throughout the various sections of the song than in the newer version, but I really liked that because that bass line really got under my skin. I did find that I liked some of the other updates to the song such as shortening of the song, but at the end of the day I actually preferred the EP version over the version on the new album.

Rich Girls isn't the only song where I preferred the version off the EP, I felt the same way about Love Is Colder Than Death, which was slowed down on the LP. This isn't to imply that I dislike the LP; this album is still one of my favorites so far this year.


The Virgins - Love Is Colder Than Death (from EP)


The Virgins - Love Is Colder Than Death (from LP)

Another song from the EP is below.


The Virgins - One Week of Danger (from EP)

The Virgins' website
The Virgins' MySpace

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