If you think that
Gary Numan was/is god, and pine for that dawn-of-'80s electro-pop revival without as much of the bombast as the original article had, this one's for you. Twenty reasonably (though not stunningly) catchy pop tunes are dressed up with gurgling, buzzing synths and boxy rhythms, though some reasonably gutsy guitar riffs and chords do much to give this some warmth. The tinny, phased vocals have been recorded to sound as if they're swimming through art-damaged intercoms. Combine that with their half-buried place in the mix, and the lyrics are often about as easy to understand as those issuing from someone addressing a crowd via megaphone on a swooping helicopter. That may very well be the intention, but when you're working in the form of pop music, it's a real problem to have the singing and lyrics so remote-sounding as to be physically inaccessible. True, you could decode more of it by wearing headphones, but the melodies and arrangements are not so brilliant that they invite that kind of effort. That's a shame, because the vocals do seem imbued with more passion and nuance than much such electro-pop. ~ Richie Unterberger