Review Summary: There’s nothing after death, not even for lovers.
I always feel certain warmth inside, when I hear of what they call ‘collaborations’. Established musicians, masters and novices or marauding explorers and those marooned in comfort zone, anyone really, coming together to create something new, bring their expertise into the light of others in order to establish a new musical direction for both parties involved. It’s actually quite exciting. What newness can be made in situations like these? Kick back a lumpful of years and in comes the announcement of already stylistically and personally closely intertwined bands Whirr and Nothing. I did feel a slight intrigue for the idea of collaboration of people who know each other so well. Then again, I also felt a healthy portion of scepticism, due to the rather non-distinct from one another nature of each band’s music. I feared to hear more of the same, but opposite was the answer. Their debut EP was a bold, albeit somewhat inconspicuous, effort. And three years later we finally get our full length.
Now, the reason I took so long with the introductory paragraph is that the album itself doesn’t have a lot to write home about. The tracks are solid enough, but none has a particularly big hitting or staying value. For the most part, I blame the marginally vague instrumentation and the drab song-to-song flow. Right off the bat, the opener “Orphans of the Smog” sits above some of the most inconsequential openers I’ve heard in a long time. It doesn’t possess a melody strong enough to carry it and the start with a fade in and end with a fade out technique is inexcusable. It sounds pleasant enough not to bore, but offers virtually nothing above its average okay-ness.
The following cluster of cuts has a little more personality to them. Starting with the glitchy, poppy “Here Lies” and “Ursula in B Major”, whose only real misstep is that the arrangement and the breathy vocals prevent it from actually being as stunning as it tries to be. However, the follower “The Lowly People” sets the track straight. It is a catchy little endeavour that is both fun and bittersweet. The remainder of the album then pretty much repeats the formula set up by the preceding tracks.
By now, the album makes it clear that any dark Goth influences from the band’s EP are long gone from their stylistic repertoire. This album is at best a brooding New Wave knock-off that New Order don’t even get involved with. More often than not, the songs such as “Perfect History” sound like a tuned down Synthpop song. The biggest surprise, if you can actually call it that, is “Quai d’ Orsay”, which delves into more of an instrumentally charged direction in electronica’s place. But it is also one of the album’s most forgettable songs. Similar surprise was the oddly mixed (sounds a bit synthetically high-pitched actually), but still pleasant to hear saxophone of the title track.
The album has a handful of tricks up its sleeve, but none delving too deep to make it all a worthwhile listen. The songs eventually grow on you as they go, but their melodic component is usually weak, as well as the stale instrumentation. Overall, the album can entertain and I suppose at the end of the day, I am not all that let down, but it still feels like more of an exercise in sameness. If you have eight tracks, don’t make them all sound like an insignificant deep cut.
