It's apparent that Playhouse doesn't come out with a full-length CD title unless it's absolutely necessary, as evidenced by the paucity and consistency of those releases. A pair of Famous When Dead compilations and single-artist albums from
Isolée and
Losoul equate to four bull's-eyes out of four attempts.
Rework's
Fall Right Now makes it five out of five. The album takes four tracks from three previously released singles and piles on another six to form an album that flits between minimal house and hook-driven synth pop. The trio -- two Hungarian male producers and one French female singer -- clearly share equal affinity for streamlined grooves and heart-stopping melodies. "You're So Just Just," the apex of their 12" releases, would be tantalizing enough as an instrumental, what with its heated blend of skipping percussion, nearly jacking pulse, and subdued raygun effects, but the detached cool of Laetitia's vocals (resembling
Kim Gordon) wonderfully expresses her conflicted feelings of lust and repulsion. Immediately after that, on "Not Quite Like Any Other," her endearingly off-key vocals are filled with longing, over a crawling tempo formed by a loping bassline, a sparse rhythm box, and keyboard effects that further convey weariness. And then right after that there's a faithful cover of Chris & Cosey's "October Love Song," a relatively chirpy synth pop song where Laetitia switches from French-speak on the verses to
Nico-gone-happy on the chorus. Despite the spotlight on the vocals, producers
Daniel Varga and Michael Kuebler obviously deserve to be singled out as well. The duo's greatest moment is one of the album's least assuming; "Amoureuse," another song with Laetitia in her native language, is one of those productions that creates its own world, specifically the kind reserved for two lovers who are so into each other that they render everything around them nonexistent. ~ Andy Kellman