An album that sounds a little too cold for the sweaty world it sprang from.
You could argue Ali Love (aka Alistair McLovan) has strangely good timing. Not lost amongst 2009’s crop of synth-pop revivalists – and with the brickbats already thrown at anyone who dared to hint at a vintage Korg collection – maybe there’s little cynicism left to lob at Love Harder. But it might also be too little, too late.
McLovan himself has come a long way since 2006’s K-Hole, a cautionary tale about falling “asleep on the bassbins” and throwing up on your plimsolls. Where K-Hole was comedically crass and edgily unlikeable, Love Harder is sonically much softer if not over-processed; all the spikes worn down. And though his lyrics reflect an imperfect world in which girls are lost in dry-iced dancefloors (Smoke & Mirrors) and where love is just “a chain of diminishing returns” (perhaps informed by Ali’s stint living above an east London nightclub), musically it’s shiny as patent leather, smothered in Italo-disco flourishes and pulsing electro stabs.
Lees de rest van deze review op BBC CD recensies (Engels)
Bron: BBC Music