album of the week: 2.3

Chairlift

Something

(2012)

why you'll love it: Synths so saturated you could swim in them

why you'll hate it: Way more pop than art

Few things annoy me more in pop culture than goofy 80's nostalgia. VH1's I Love The 80's, The Wedding Singer, pretending John Hughes teen comedies were any good. Aside from horror movies, the 80's were terrible. A cultural cesspool. On the surface, Chairlift's new album, Something, appears to be that annoying cheeky hipster approach to 80s pop. They do something a little bit different, though, take it seriously.

Chairlift's brief iPhone commercial popularity seemed to miss me entirely. I had not heard the song "Bruises" until just a few months ago. Something is my first good look into this band, and from what I've read, this album is a major departure from their usual cookie-cutter indie pop style. This is a very evolved synth-pop album. A better reviewer than me pegged this as "what the 80's thought the future of music would be." That is spot on. The electronics are HUGE on this album. There are some brilliant heavy, gloppy synths that remind me of YMO's Technodelic (1981).

Something sets a very high bar with the first two tracks. "Sidewalk Safari" is probably the best song about vehicular homicide I've ever heard. "Wrong Opinion" has the craziest art-house synths. But Chairlift isn't Hot Chip. They're not out to make art-attacks. I'm thinking the depth of the first two tracks may have been stumbled upon, because the rest of the songs follow a basic pop ballad formula. I'm not all that annoyed. There are still a lot of great moments in "Amanaemonesia" and "Guilty As Charged". It's just that this album had the opportunity to be an out-of-nowhere electronic treasure trove. Instead, the story is "oh wow, an 80's sounding album that I don't hate."

No matter what kind of music fan you are, or how well you have known Chairlift, this album definitely has a few enjoyable surprises for you. It's a great party album for the first half of 2012, but I don't really see it having legs. Despite getting disappointingly pop after the first two songs, I really appreciate Chairlift's dedication to this sound. It isn't shallow or a silly little nod. Chairlift dives straight into the deep end of synthpop here, and for a brief half hour, sets itself apart from all the modern hipster tropes of piano ties and Don Johnson references.