On their full-length debut, Night on Fire,
VHS or Beta trade in the
Daft Punk-esque filter disco of their EP for dance-punk with a new wave twist. At their best, as on the album's title track and "No Cabaret!," the band sounds like
Robert Smith singing over
Duran Duran remixes; like the similarly retro-minded
Killers, they have a knack for distilling everyone's favorite new wave/post-punk moments into pop confections. This shiny pop veneer gives
VHS or Beta an edge over the increasing, and increasingly tired-sounding, ranks of artists recreating the '70s and '80s' disco-punk hybrids -- instead of trying to attach any kind of deep significance to their rolling basslines, staccato riffs, and polyrhythms, they buff the style's rough edges into smooth stylishness. The only problem with the band's transformation from a dance-inspired band to a poppier one is that their songwriting isn't always as strong as their grooves are; "You Got Me" and "The Ocean" meander, proving that it's possible to sound driving but not compelling. The dance-punk instrumentals are particularly tepid: "Nightwaves"' chrome-plated guitar squeals and four-on-the-floor beat are squandered by stretching a three-minute idea out to five-and-a-half, while the nine-minute album closer, "Irreversible," goes nowhere and seemingly refuses to end. But Night on Fire's second half makes it a little more difficult to dismiss
VHS or Beta as also-rans; perhaps not surprisingly, the band gets more interesting once it stops tracing the dance-punk template so closely. "Forever" is a gloriously cheesy disco ballad rife with vocoders, wah-wah guitars, and rippling keyboard arpeggios that recalls
VHS or Beta's early work as well as
Discovery-era
Daft Punk. Though they don't quite achieve the transcendent takeoff that the French duo achieves so effortlessly, the track does sound fresher and more genuine than some of the posturing found elsewhere on Night on Fire. Likewise, "Dynamize" is another fun instrumental, a great big love letter to the big guitars 'n' drums sound of the '80s.
VHS or Beta also do well when they indulge their poppier instincts: "The Melting Room" and "Alive" are two of the most danceable songs
the Cure never wrote. Even though it's possible nobody will care about dance-punk by the time
VHS or Beta get their next album out, Night on Fire is an uneven but promising debut album that suggests that the group may still create something distinctive. ~ Heather Phares