In the 2010s, Denmark became home to a new breed of bands who took the rage and ferocity of punk rock and transformed it into something more polished and exacting, but no less powerful. But if bands like
Iceage and
Lower are reworking the frameworks of punk, Copenhagen's
Communions are their new wave counterparts. 2017's
Blue, the first full-length album from the
Communions, is all clean lines, crisply processed drums, and cool, melodic guitar figures, suggesting they're a lost British band from the era when
the Cure,
Echo and the Bunnymen,
the Chameleons UK, and
the Mighty Lemon Drops held sway.
Communions aim for a brighter, less gloomy sound than those acts, but the framework isn't especially different, and you could drop most tracks from
Blue into a mix drawn from a late-'80s episode of 120 Minutes and most listeners would never be the wiser. In most respects, this speaks to the skill of the outfit; in less than three years, they've evolved into a band that can play at the level of their influences, and write tunes that musically and lyrically point to influences of the past and attitudes of the present day. Lead vocalist Martin Rehof can sound passionate and yearning at once, while guitarist Jacob van Deurs Formann, bassist Mads Rehof (Martin's brother), and drummer Frederik Lind Köppen perform with crisp professionalism, while producers Mads Norgaard and Malte Fischer capture them with a sound that's slick but not overbearing. The trouble is, while
Communions have skill and ambition, they're a bit short on ideas and originality; this sounds like authentic U.K. pop of the '80s, but not like a band or an album that would have stood out from the crowd at the time, and though the band's earliest recordings had a welcome dash of fire and scrap, there are no rough edges here, and these songs could use them.
Blue is an inarguably impressive full-length debut in terms of
Communions' ability to evoke the sound and mood of a particular time and place, but it might be a stronger work if the groupmembers had actually witnessed the time and place themselves.evoke the sound and mood of a particular time and place. [
Blue was also released on LP.] ~ Mark Deming