Graham Reid | | 1 min read
After
internet chatter last year about how cool, kitschy and carefree this
now Brooklyn-based duo of George Langford and Tom Van Buskirk (and
friends) were for their loose borrowings from all parts of pop
history (cheap Farfisa pop, reductive disco, New Wave bubblegum) on
their widely circulated demos (Jamz
n Jemz), you hoped they
would step up on their debut album and deliver something as
enjoyable, if more lo-fi/lowkey as the Mika or MGMT debuts. Even
something as mediocre as the most recent Hot Chip album would be
interesting.
But No
Mas is as much a shapeless
collage as their cover art: their bedroom electro-pop (On
It On It, We Ah Wi, C Town)
is weak; they think the Chipmunks provided relevant source material
(the speed-up voices on Oh!
Centra); and pulling in
various instruments doesn't add much to wafer-thin ideas.
Better
comes when they stab at straight-ahead lounge-pop (Tell
Me What Will It Be? with
its irritatingly enjoyable keyboards, Shadow
Heart), but mostly this is
for Hello Kitty kids who prefer cute to substance, and arrested
adolescence to sitting at the table with grown-ups.
Langford
is on record as saying the minute he starts on one idea he gets
distracted and wants to work on another. Here's evidence he should
take the medication because, fun though musical ADHD might be, it
doesn't translate to a CD.
post a comment