The album's overall positive feel, as Bird and Kellie Sutherland trade off vocal quirks over ebullient beats and electronics, tends to inveigle listeners. But this charm dissipates quickly, leaving a few great tunes, a handful of head-bobbers and a series of embarrassing miscues in the wake.
The disco-thump and otherworldly atmospherics of opener "Red Turned White" recapture past magic, while the ascetic restraint and subtle layering of "Heart It Races" are spacey fun. Elsewhere, "Lazy (Lazy)" allows a listless musical phrase to germinate into an ecstatic explosion of melody and distorted shouts.
Those successes, however, do not erase the awkwardness of the snappy-pop-cum-stadium-rock disaster "Nothing's Wrong," or the indulgent sugar-blasts of the maddeningly repetitive "Hold Music," to name just a couple of the problem tunes. For such a short album (10 songs, 31 minutes)--and this is the really depressing part--there is only enough impressive material for a minor EP.
The group is still a joyous sight to behold live, but future releases should stay away from places like this.
