a strange album, especially for a debut.
if you judge this on the opening 10 minutes that you could be easily forgiven thinking that you have stumbled upon one of the greatest indie rock-n-pop album of the year. but as is so often the case, things are never that simple. hailing from austin, the band have toured with critics arcade fire and are obviously hoping that their brand of piano, layered guitars, heaven scraping melodies will win over the masses in the same way. opening with the 1 minute brilliance of ‘get out’, and, following this with the superb ‘born to please’ it’s quickly apparent that the band have a wonderful indie power pop chemistry going on. however, as the album progresses, the bands urge to twist the genre beyond its normal restrictions begins to be noticeable. none more so than on the albums title track, which is based upon kraftwerk styled throbbing machine noise, ambient synthetics and little else. thankfully, despite these sonic twists, the band have managed to maintain the presence of tunes. just that for those that like so called ‘real instruments’ these 2 centre pieces are going to be the cause of an excess of furrowed brows. this laid back piece of gorgeousness is followed by the 6 minute krautrock groove of ‘tv torso’ which should keep the feet happy even if the brain isn’t overly impressed, and when the guitars eventually kick in, so do the pleasure nerves.
if you can get past these sidesteps in style, the album falls back into the pattern of old school 70’s keyboard/electric piano loops, guitars and a whole lot of love. tracks like ‘your eyes are liars’ have more of those upfront tempos and melodies that could win over radio playlist selectors, and there are more of the multilayered productions such as the eno-esque treated guitars on ‘afterglow years’ and ‘you’ve never lived a day’, which are both especially nice.
so this is an album that could quite possibly have you smiling from ear to ear by the fourth listen. certainly did so for me.