Vietnam

The musicians in Vietnam come off about as pretentious as possible. Yes, they are from Brooklyn. Yes, they run with the fashion-forward crowd. Yes, they cuss a lot. Yes, they got the memo that having a bass player is out of vogue. Yes, someone needs to add to their record collection something other than the Velvet Underground. Yes, on the same note, every song on their debut EP sounds like a different cover of the Lou Reed guitar epic "Heroin." Yes, girls who look like Nico make up the majority of their crowds. But everyone in a rock band wants to be some predecessor, right? Yes. Just write off the trio's blatant influences as the guilty pleasures of a really fun, higher-fidelity cover band, because if Vietnam had to pick someone to steal from, Reed and company are swell choices, and this EP is just bubbling with the stuff that made the VU so good in the first place.