I wonder at what point the 80s went from the decade of Thatcherism and social decay to retrospectively the coolest decade of the 20th century. Hundreds of Primark kings and queens flooded the streets with the slogan “Born in the 80s” roaring out from t-shirts, and massive square-framed glasses became the coolest thing since Power Rangers. Similarly, the revival of Eighties electro-pop influenced music has been sudden and pervasive; we now have La Roux and Little Boots championing the good ship Indie, captained only a few years ago by the likes of The Strokes and The Libertines.
And so we come to The Response Collective’s new album Dark Is The Light. Every track on here is rooted firmly and immovably in the Eighties. But I don’t mean the good Eighties, with The Smiths, the last embers of Joy Division and the electronic genius of Severed Heads; I mean the Eighties of flaccid electro-gyration by the likes of Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark. The album gets off to a bad start in the opener Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, which tries to pull off an ambient soundscape in the vein of Brian Eno, but is blighted by a mundane, five-note guitar riff, which is repeated beyond the point of tedium. Things pick up slightly with the album’s title track, which sounds like New Order crossed with Dire Straits; the singer has a decent voice and the tune isn’t bad, but the whole thing is steeped so deeply in cheese that it would pose a genuine health hazard to the lactose-intolerant. There are some good ideas on show in the next few tracks; Follow Me Forever Sea features female backing vocals reminiscent of the ethereal Enya, while Moment Of Profanity is built around a dark hip-hop bass line that shows some interesting flexibility in TRC’s songwriting capabilities. However, these moments are often lost in an orgy of awful synth and utterly superfluous scratching. The contributions of the band’s resident “Turntablist,” the eponymous “Fireproof Skratch Duck,” are best likened to flies buzzing round your head (although he is surely a shoo-in for the most fantastically bizarre name on the Oxford music scene).
The album does have its redeeming features. Graham Pushed It throws out the lame synthwork for an upbeat guitar-driven sound that recalls The Cure’s In Between Days, while down-tempo number Turn It Out‘s epic chorus borrows from Muse’s Megalomania and even perhaps the beginning of Bohemian Rhapsody. There’s some genuinely good stuff going on here. However, it’s difficult to look past the simple fact that Dark Is The Light is dated. Horribly dated. So dated you can almost hear the Zimmer Frame creaking in the background. It’s awash with self-indulgent guitar solos, tinny synthesized drums and cringe-worthy analogue soundscaping that make a mockery of the band’s claim that “Our mission is to provide new innovative music.” If this was an open homage to a bygone era of pop, that would be forgivable. But to dress it up as “innovative” is a different matter. Frank Zappa would be turning in his grave…