Categories : Electronica, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop.
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Rating: 2.5/5 Released: September 12, 2006 Reviewer: David Coats |
Pieces of the People We Love is a melodic, fun, organic-meets-electronic dance-rock record you can’t help but feel good listening to, complete with drum machines and a band member credited for the ‘bleeps and bloops.’
The first three songs are the record’s high water mark, with the title track being the most mysterious and the least stereotypically retro. From that point, however, it becomes unclear whether the band’s creative sense is stuck in the mid ‘80s, as about half the record sounds retro for its own sake, rather than fusing it with new ideas to take their music in new directions. ‘Get Myself Into It’ has a great sax funk riff (complete with ‘Groove-is-in-the-Heart’ style percussion) but its value is in providing catchy dance rock, which is fine, provided that’s all you’re expecting.
The record really tumbles with ‘First Gear,’ which contains some intriguing subtleties, but runs about two minutes too long. ‘The Devil’ is strikingly reminiscent of Donna Summer; vocalist Mattie Safer has a very distinctive, higher-than-normal voice, which proves an acquired taste. The most interesting lyric is “Emotional distance, it doesn’t rhyme, or resonate brilliance in its time,†making it all the more frustrating that most of the record is so lyrically inconsequential. Song titles include ‘Whoo! Alright – Yeah…Uh Huh,’ with lyrics like “What the fuck / just bad luck†and “First gear – I’m overload / In my-m-my-my M-Mustang Ford! OW!â€
The latter third of the record, more modern and still danceable though without some of its melodic vibrancy, is where the songs start to be rooted in more substantial concepts. There are certainly elements to like, and this is promising in many ways, but it’s debatable whether the time for this was really in a New York club twenty years ago.
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