New Yorkers Busy Gangnes and Melissa Livaudais have long been hot property in tipster circles as Telepathe, but rather than leap atop the first available gravy train a couple of years back, they’ve been patient and delivered a debut album that’ll surprise a lot of people, fans and sceptics alike.
Since emerging via a couple of EPs and a Genuine Breakthrough Track, ‘Chrome’s On It’ – you couldn’t navigate your way around the net’s best blogs for mention of it only a year or so ago – Telepathe have seemed like a phenomenon waiting to happen to observers with ears tuned to the avant-fine sounds of the Brooklyn underground: Effi Briest, Gang Gang Dance, TV On The Radio. Busy and Melissa waited in the wings while the aforementioned took their shots, some more successfully than others; now, ‘Dance Mother’ makes good on their delayed promise, and more.
First impressions in this instance do not last, as first impressions of ‘Dance Mother’ sell it a long way short. Initially what strikes you is the detachment of the twin vocalists, the way their words sit atop the slick, retro-electro movements; integration seems secondary to the execution of a very particular style, creating a sense of cool indifference that threatens to mask the album’s deeper delights.
But persevere, listening through the surface-level gloss laid on thick by producer David Sitek – the TVOTR man came approached the band about working with them, rather than the other way around – and, without warning, an emotional warmth is felt through the neon blue superstructure. The lyrics take on a greater meaning, what seemed like inconsequential wordplay transforming into poetic musings on everything from escapism to (fictional) murder. The girls’ flights of fantasy come into clear view, and suddenly you’re there with them.
The only time this interplay between glitchy electro – to be honest, it’s as future-looking as it is ‘80s-referencing, rocking atop a fulcrum marked ‘Do Whatever You Like’ – and give-a-fuck vocals doesn’t quite snap into place is ‘Lights Go Down’, which seems rather too aggressive of tone to make a repeat-visit impact. Better are ‘Devil’s Trident’ and ‘Michael’, the latter savage of lyric but executed with a silken touch that ensures you can enjoy it regardless of the depth of your dissection. The album’s centrepiece is the ethereal ‘Can’t Stand It’, which seems out of place with the faster numbers that surround it, but slips effortlessly into position without effecting album coherency.
“Oh, you know it could be so much better…” sigh our protagonists on the aforementioned standout; all any listener of sense can do is sigh with them, wishing to be swept away to this otherworldly land they inhabit with such angelic elegance and devilish imagination.
