Vacationer only formed back in May 2011 and here we are a year later with an album of electronic pop in the can and on the shelves. The band is fronted by Kenny Vasoli from pop-punk outfit The Starting Line, who was apparently exposed to new musical possibilities by Body Language members Matthew Young and Grant Wheeler.

Gone is a cuddly slice of electronic popness that is truly inoffensive. It’s a consistently mid-tempo affair with a giant streak of neutrality running through it, but there are occasional moments to cling to, cradle and optimistically believe mark the opening chapter to something greater.

Good as New is like a crackling reboot of The Avalanches, only less interesting, Trip is a soulful croon sucked backwards through pop filters, set in time with a timid hip hop backbeat. But the title track turns the tide of aimlessness with a simpler arrangement, including a memorable guitar riff that imitates the vocal melody. Finally it seems Vacationer have a decent song, and the instrumentation falls into place with a sense of natural occurrence.

The vibe of lonesome melancholy runs into the next track too. Having It All boasts a hypnotic quality via Vasoli’s effective vocal tone that soars overhead of all involved. Yet at the end of the day Vacationer don’t have enough decent songs to justify an album’s worth of music. Too much sounds like it was written on Monday, ready to put down on Tuesday, all within the confines of the digital studio. It feels as if there is a serious lack of depth that no amount of smooth and chilled pop arrangements can disguise. I think I’ll hold out for the next Passion Pit record if you don’t mind.

-Zac Cohen-

Having Dangermouse produce your record does run the risk that you may end up sounding a bit like Dangermouse. You could be any artist, any genre, anybody – from southern fried rockers to UK indie-poppers, with Mr Burton at the controls you may well become a genetically modified version of Dangermouse.

Okay, his production is awesome – those bouncy bass-lines and funkified beats are infectious, to say the least. And it’s true – they can be manipulated to suit your genre of choice. But when a band like Electric Guest turn up unannounced, we don’t know what they sounded like before, we just hear those bouncy bass-lines and funkified beats with a different voice upfront.

I’ll do the introductions – Electric Guest are LA duo Asa Taccone and Matthew Compton. They clearly possess some natural soul and rhythm, and they’ve been working with Dangermouse for a while now. But their debut is not solely their own, and that is frustrating when you are new on the scene with some decent tunes in tow.

You’ll unknowingly swing and tap in time to the irrepressible Awake – it moves in style with 60s goodtime funky soul running right through it. Taccone croons with some natural moves – hear him on the smooth R&B inflected Under the Gun, he’s a natural.

There’s a touch of Broken Bells at play on Amber – sci-fi synths and that Burton snare roll – but it’s a decent tune nevertheless. American Day Dream is better still – the communal vocal breaks to a radio-crackled solo tone with some Motown-glistened guitars.

Electric Guest have eased themselves onto the dance-floor, following Burton’s tried and tested moves. But there is a lack of immediacy and grit, and what lies beneath the sounds and rhythms is a sound we know all too well. This is not bad in anyway, it just isn’t going to turn many heads.

-Zac Cohen-

You may have read White Denim’s frontman, James Petralli, refer to their latest record, D, as their fourth album. That’s because he considers Last Days of Summer, a freely downloadable set released last year, as album number three – and not just a bundle of demos. And with that in mind, and with the awesomeness of D still reverberating, the record is now being given a formal release – which it wholly deserves.

The set was recorded at drummer Josh Block’s home studio, and witnessed the band (which now includes second guitarist Austin Jenkins) throwing caution to the wind – just getting down their influences on tape, whatever shape they may take. And with such eclectic ideas at play, they truly believed it would be back to the nine-to-five once this collection saw the light of day.

With all of the above in mind there is little wonder Last Days of Summer comes across like a band free from the shackles of expectation. The driving and inventive rhythm section (that we have come to expect from the Austin group) roll and run in the shimmering 60s tinged Home Together. Any hint of guitar solos are set deep within the psychedelic setting. The easy-going If You’re Changing lounges with style, banding off stop/start drums and fiddly guitar refrains. The excellent final verse has Petralli picking it up a gear with some fast delivery.

The there’s the jazz-like improv session Light Light Light – it’s a layered set of guitars and brass soloing, entwined with care and attention. This is a talented band losing themselves in areas normally off-limits to the rock and pop crowd. The whole album oozes a more intimate atmosphere – there is a light of touch that is apparent in tracks like the whispered tumble of Our Get or the funk-riffing Shy Billy.

The songs here are vibrant and crafted with love and affection. This is White Denim falling in love with music all over again whatever the consequences – and the rest is history.

-Jon Harper-

Penguin Prison is Chris Glover and a whole lot of electro funk, 80s soul, disco and dance. Opening track ‘Don’t Fuck with my Money’ is like a neon sign telling us that Quincy Jones, Prince of old and unadulterated 80s keyboards are going to feature heavily throughout the set. It is also a piece of disco funk without a single note of originality.

‘Funny Thing’ does slightly improve the colourless introduction, taking a lead from Hot Chip on the looping percussion that beats intently, the analogue synths pulsate and Glover delivers a simple vocal. But while Hot Chip manages to inject a unique take on their dance routine, Penguin Prison doesn’t. It just feels to smooth and one-dimensional.

Nothing here will offend, and on the single ‘Fair Warning’ we get a glimpse of Glover getting passionate – the voice becomes more worn and believable, the melody actually allows emotion across the arpeggio synth-work. It’s a warm wave of retro chart music that is strangely uplifting.

Yet the clichés, as a whole, are spread far too generously – ‘In The Way’ is like an old 80s star taking on LCD Soundsystem and falling short by some distance. The production and arrangement is far too polished to offer any sort of reason for repeat listens.

This is a record far too concerned with mining the 80s that it forgot to include a voice of its own. The electronics, the funk, the disco and the faultless production leave little room for Glover to imprint his own personality – who instead opts for inferior versions of what’s been before.

-William Bell-

German duo Digitalism’s second album, ‘I Love You Dude’, has taken the promise of the debut and shelved it. This sophomore effort lacks the sharpness and cohesion of ‘Idealism’, at times getting lost in the process (between the mainstream and the dancefloor)

There are too many different influences going on at once. A bulk of the music is Italo disco influenced, using linear high hat patterns and synthesizers which might have been considered futuristic in the 80s – yet are common place nowadays. Yet the dirtier tracks in the album don’t work so well either. ‘Reeperbahn’ is littered with distorted wobble effects and predictable screaming samples. And the record’s lack of a coherent theme makes this track, and others, seem less sincere.

‘Blitz’ is a housey feel-good track ticking many of the text book dance music boxes: and whilst there’s nothing particularly noteworthy about it, it’ll no doubt be the track which will make it to the clubs – if that’s what the duo are aiming for. Add to that the obligatory chill-out track, ‘Just Gazin’’, and you’ve got a good case for calling ‘I Love You Dude’ a failed attempt at trying to put some distance between the band and an album of all-out dance music – opting instead for a jaunt in the mainstream.

Most tracks leave us lost and we can’t work out where to put this record. Many moments feel too repetitive to be listened to consciously, yet are not presented in a way suitable for the DJ’s –  its BPM’s and styles are happy dipping their toes in various waters.

Clearly the German musicians are fine producers, and can turn their hand to varying ideas. But it seems that album number two is trying to please everyone with a passing persuasion to dance, and as a result it doesn’t come across as a fully realized body of work.

-Megan Clifton-

Sometimes Bowlegs just has to cut to the chase and begin with the important stuff. In this case, it’s simple. You need White Denim’s latest long player, the laconically titled ‘D’. It rocks. Just buy it. It’s as simple as that.

‘D’ is an album which sees their influences, experiments, and wackiness come together in one great fusion of 70s prog, psychedelic rock, southern country, Caribbean rhythm, jazz, funk and balls-to-the-wall stadium posturing. It’s all wrapped up in musicianship so tight you could cut your girlfriend’s stonewashed denims into hot pants with it and set them on fire, then dance around the embers while White Denim blow your head off through the sheer chutzpah of what they can do with their instruments.

The opener ‘It’s Him’, is a slow burner that jangles into action with a laidback country vibe, before shifting into a jazzier rhythm, and then to a completely different coda for the ending, leaving you wondering just how many songs you’ve heard.

Tracks two and three, ‘Burnished’ and ‘At the Farm’ are essentially two parts of the same song. ‘Burnished’ explodes its way through psych wah-wahs and a reggae-infused chorus then away again into a sun-kissed piece of quiet peculiarity. This only lulls the ears into a false sense of security before the epic jam that is ‘At the Farm’ builds into a pitch-perfect recreation of every orgasmic 70s freak-out you’ve ever heard.

Knowing there’s nowhere to go after that but onto the slow stuff, the Denims slip back into a mellow, intimate piece of acoustic strumming, for the emotive ‘Street Joy,’ which shows off their song-writing ability to good effect, as well as James Petralli’s vocal prowess.

The fast-slow trick is one that’s repeated later in the album, with the similar combo of the last two tracks, the totally irresistible, ‘Is and Is and Is’ – which features one of the best guitar riff finales Bowlegs has heard in years – and the country-lite coda, ‘Keys’. There’s also the small matter of the tracks in-between, of course, but it’s enough to say that all of them hold up against the rest.

‘D’ is a record so dense it really shouldn’t work beyond an almost academic example of a band trying to squeeze everything they love about guitars, bass and drums into one 10 track long-player. The fact that it does work, and so brilliantly, means this is an album you’ll want to revisit again and again, just to convince yourself you did hear what you thought you heard.

-Keith Tomlinson-