A Sonic Masterclass
Another week and yet another impossibly well styled outfit release yet another slice of original and mesmeric music, courtesy of the city that never sleeps.
Produced by Alan Moulder, the knob twiddler extraordinaire behind Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins and Depeche Mode and joining with the New York three piece, they have created a master class in highly charged, sonically interesting, semi-anthemic tracks.
Often, music of this ilk sounds like it would be at home in a pretentious club, choc full of Nathan Barleyites, uttering some innocuous comment like “This track is totally Dalston”. Somehow, and a little surprisingly, they manage to transcend their obviously uber-trendy edge into something which is a little more palatable for the masses. By cleverly mixing elements of electronica, rock and including a hefty slab of dance music, they have avoided the usual pitfalls of sounding too cluttered and too busy and have created one of the most interesting and varied albums heard for some time.
'Valentine', as an opener teeters on the poseur-core scale, not wholly, but you can imagine your local trendy night spot playing this whilst arty types and bores muse on great works of literature and argue the merits of the media in social interaction and other such guff. But it is next track, 'The Outlaw Jimmy Rose' which impresses: a fiery indie disco anthem which sweats with the intensity of fat man running a marathon in a desert. Vaguely reminiscent of The Rapture and their ability to create dance floor frenzies, its success is its flagrant use of guitar. Compared to the Lemon Jelly flavoured simplicity of 'White Limousine', the proverbial eye of the storm, they seem to have run the gauntlet somewhat with this album in relation to what they have covered. Pretty much all bases and all the best bits of genres included.
At some points sounding like Kasabian at a rave, at others like Hot Chip at a rock show, and occasionally like the Rolling Stones in a ZX Spectrum, they cleverly weave together the best of the genres giving a little something for everyone. Although this isn’t genre shaking, it is another example of the flourishing NYC music scene.