Review Summary: Tonight I'm gonna party like it's 1985.
Listening to the newest offering by Spanish post-punk outfit Belgrado has led me to ask one single question: when will the era of 80s worship officially be over? It’s often said that each new decade immortalizes and mythologizes the decade that happened 30 years prior, which makes sense when you consider all the 80s-inspired synthpop albums that came out in the 2010s - Carly Rae Jepsen’s
Emotion, Paramore’s
After Laughter, etc. To an extent, the 2020s have started following suit with the pop-punk revival, which clearly treads the ground Blink-182 covered in the 90s. Man, I can’t wait for grunge to come back! But there are still several stragglers that are aping 80s synth and new wave aesthetics, and one spin of
Intra Apogeum will make you think you were just transported into the
Stranger Things universe.
That’s not to say that Belgrado have fully abandoned their post-punk roots, as several melodies and basslines harken back to the group’s haunting, gothed-up early work. But holy hell, did they really amp up the synths and electronic elements for this one; nearly every inch of this project is littered with layers of keyboards and programmed drums, making for a much more cold and clinical affair this time around. Opener “Boixar” immediately sets the tone, with strange echo-swathed melodies and sparse production leading the way, as singer Patrycja Proniewska opts for a soft and somewhat understated vocal performance. Unlike the band’s previous record
Obraz, in which the angular guitar/synth combo created a sense of claustrophobia and clutter, the sound found on much of
Intra Apogeum is decidedly more expansive and open-ended.
As I said earlier, this thing is fucking
drenched in the 80s - from the production to the instrumentation to the vocals, it almost makes one doubt that it even came out in 2023. Just listen to the icy keyboard pops that are glazed over the hypnotic midtempo number “Rytmy Wszechswiata”, or the distinctly new wave-inspired bass-led jaunt of “Elementy Umyslu”. Simply put: if you’re sick to death of 80s pop nostalgia, then this record isn’t for you. With that said, the way the Barcelonian four-piece experiment with this antiquated sound
does lead to some neat results from time to time. True to the spirit of post-punk, the bass on
Intra Apogeum is just as much of a melodic instrument as the synths themselves; cuts such as “Tesknota” and the aforementioned “Rytmy Wszechswiata” do an excellent job of letting the bass pop and run on its own accord, often completely independent of what the keyboards are doing. I also dig the closing title track, as its dark, frosty keys are a perfect foil for the constant momentum of the drum machine beneath them.
Unfortunately, there aren’t
enough of these interesting setpieces. All too often, the songs on
Intra Apogeum simply blend together without much to latch onto. Even at only 36 minutes, I often find that this repetitive synthpop sound just gets too samey over its runtime - especially when the drum patterns of each song are so damn similar. The vocals don’t exactly help, as Proniewska’s performance is mostly relegated to doing the same mid-range “airy” singing over the course of the record. The album is begging to have more variation; maybe a ballad to slow things down, or perhaps a more guitar-driven number to add a little extra “oomph”. Unfortunately, with so many songs running at the exact same pace and using the same songwriting techniques as one another, I find that the finished product often goes in one ear and out the other.
The best word I can use to describe
Intra Apogeum is “pleasant”. It’s not amazing, nor is it remotely dreadful. It’s just… well, pleasant. It’s a mildly interesting synthpop-meets-post-punk affair that doesn’t go above the call of duty in any way, yet doesn’t falter horribly in any way either. Unfortunately, that places it in a dead zone in which it’s hard to know who I’d recommend it to. If you simply
LOVE the 80s and can’t get enough of it, then I guess you might find something of value here. But again, Belgrado seem pretty late to the party; maybe if they’d gotten in on this trend a decade ago, then it might have made more sense. But as it is,
Intra Apogeum is just a decent excursion through old synthpop and new wave tropes; it’s fine for what it is, but also could have been a whole lot more.
