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"L.A.’s Rearranged Face is back with the follow-up to 2021’s A Rare Caged Fern 12”, giving their anxious, art-fractured racket only slightly more room to unwind this time around. Far Green Arcade features eleven tracks jammed out fully econo, a frenetic blur of whirring and beeping keys, taut rubber band bass, bee-in-bonnet vocals, and urgently bashed beats, dished out in mostly sub-two-minute increments, never overstaying their welcome. The band’s basic approach is still a jumpy mix of Devo-descended wiggly world rhythms (“Another Mystery” and “Blink of an Eye” are especially devolved), hip-swinging early ’00s post-punk revival sass (the hiccuping floor-burner “Serpentstone”), and the synth-flecked bounce of early new wave (before that became a completely loaded term). But rather than merely stitching those asymmetrical scraps into another by-the-numbers genre pastiche, Rearranged Face bring a restless energy and genuine weirdo creativity to their twitchy sound, crafting something that’s authentically their own while still lovingly citing touchstones from the past—the new wave of new wave." - Erika Elizabeth (MRR/Domestic Departure/Collate)
Our take: I really enjoyed this LA band’s 2021 LP, A Rare Caged Fern (which is still in stock!), and this new album is an excellent follow-up. While I probably reference turn-of-the-80s art rock / new wave bands like Suburban Lawns, Talking Heads, and the B-52’s in descriptions of contemporary bands relatively often, few of them evoke that vibe as strongly as Rearranged Face. Perhaps it’s Rearranged Face’s crisp production style, which is a marked contrast to the lo-fi egg punk bands who share a similar set of influences (particularly Devo, whose criss-crossing robotic rhythms are all over Far Green Arcade). Uranium Club is a contemporary band that does something similar to Rearranged Face, but whereas Uranium Club’s music often stretches to psychedelic lengths, Rearranged Face’s songs are snappy and dense with ideas. I’m a sucker for bands like this who wrap toe-tapping melodies in an arty and slightly obtuse aesthetic, and Far Green Arcade definitely scratches that itch.