Crush

The problem here is that, while Abe Vigoda have done a great job nailing their stylistic transition, the new direction has brought them a lot closer to a sound which, for me, is far less fresh and innovative than what they were doing on Skeleton.

As 80s nostalgia has melted into 90s nostalgia with the concluding aughts, some parts of pop music (especially indie pop) have perhaps unsurprisingly slid what’s retro forward, dwelling no longer on the 60s and 70s (revisited psychedelia, disco), but on the 80s, an era that now concluded nearly 20 years ago. Granted, there’ve always been synthesizers. In some circles, the indispensability of the artificial, of the 4/4 dance beat, was never called into question — night clubs and dance pop have always needed the non-acoustic to survive. But even as theme-party attendees have abandoned their sweatbands and side-ponytails for flannel and combat boots, the center-of-the-road alt-pop band has looked to those fads’ temporal predecessors for inspiration. (See: Yeasayer’s Odd Blood, Bear In Heaven’s Beast Rest Forth Mouth, M83’s Saturdays=Youth, etc.)

The songs may sound more conventional, but they're no less complex. The music is hard-wired and overflowing with activity, even in the record's sparsest moments.

Even if an abundance of programming tools are on hand, all the delectable qualities that defined the band since their beginnings are still intact.

The tropical warmth of Skeleton has now been replaced by a harder, darker, chillier core. Where words can be made out over the rich (sometimes over-layered) production, references appear to be to "ghosts", "black holes", "lives unknown", all this matching the generally angst-ridden and sometimes flat-out anguished tone of the vocal.