Easter presents us with a curate’s egg of an album: good in parts.
Let’s start with the bad: most of it. This third full outing from US indie popstrels Ra Ra Riot, sees electronic complexity added to their so-called ‘baroque’ style.
Opening track Dance With Me is an irritating swing monstrosity. Second up, Binary Mind bangs along simply too fast, like they’d set an arbitrary deadline on the end of the song (yet at 3:13 it’s the longest of the 12 tracks).
Angel, Please has an quite a traditional feel to it – almost like it’s an electronic cover of a Beach Boys track. It’s quite nice. However, When I Dream is almost unlistenable. It sounds like it was written for an X-Factor finalist. The auto-tuner doesn’t help here either. That Much again troubles the eardrums – it is flawed by 80s emulations and aimlessness.
Fortunately, For Once is a more traditional strings-y bouncy indie tune. It’s not to my taste, and once again Ra Ra Riot try too hard or have simply been overproduced – it happens to the best bands. Sack the producer and move on.
One dead drummer, two departed string pluckers: time has not been kind to Ra Ra Riot. So let’s be kind. The title track of this album is fucking amazing.
The title track will fill dancefloors. It will haunt you during ad breaks. If there was any justice in the world, this would be number one rather than Ant ‘n’ Dec (yes, I am paying attention). It’s bright, perky, inventive and dancey. It fairly romps along. This is three-minute falsetto pop that won’t trouble your mum. In fact, give her a listen – she’ll like it. You can share a happy moment.
If the rest of the album lived up to even half this level I’d be minded to give 10 out of 10. It doesn’t, so just download the single track and look for your aural kicks elsewhere.
4/10
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