Dance Mother

Any excitement gathering around Brooklynites Telepathe last year was public executed with a live show that suggested broken beats are made with broken instruments. Cheap ones. Melissa Livaudais and Busy Gagnes wailing out of time and tune with each did nothing to help their cause either.

Thus, despite the Chrome’s On It and Devil’s Trident e.p.s being two of my favourite releases of last year, I lost the inclination to get to bothered about their debut album Dance Mother, a feeling compounded on seeing that three of the nine tracks on it came from the aforementioned releases.

Perhaps there is something to be said for the role expectation plays in our eventual opinion of things. Whatever the case, Dance Mother has blown me away. Having not listened to Chrome’s On It, Devil’s Trident and the other previously released track Lights Go Down for a while, they sound startling, especially Devil’s Trident on which they growl aptly “it was a basic sensation, it is a basic sensation”. It sounds both futuristic and primal.

These songs sound like they have come from a future when the only musical influences that have survived are Eighties synth-pop, nursery rhymes and hip-hop beats- which have been reclaimed from the hands of so many turgid rappers and taken once more as the innovative tool they used to be. Take Trilogy- Breath of Life, Crimes and Killings, Threads and Knives with its barrage of low-riding gangsta synths; it is like a classic West Coast hip-hop track, albeit one with the BPM’s reduced to the pace of a pounding heart, a sound that befits the ache Telepathe infuse it with.

That said the real strength of the album lies in the way the girls utilise Dave Sitek’s production. Due to the school talent show style of their vocals, Telepathe are never going to sound slick, a fact that means Sitek’s production can never sound too polished and end-up overwhelming, as on TV On The Radio’s last album Dear Science. More radical though, is the effect generated when the girl’s adolescent vocals combine with his wall-of-sound construction; this combination causes the music to swell with an odd nostalgia which is completely heart-breaking. This is especially true of the stand-out tracks In Your Line, Can’t Stand It and album highlight Michael, which seems to use the Aurora Borealis as a backdrop for the chorus. It is at these moments when their glitchy futurism reveals itself to be something more ethereal.

In a year when strong albums are coming out of the left-field at a dizzying rate, Telepathe have created something unique that demands your attention.

Seek.

Telepathe- Can't Stand It

Telepathe- Michael