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To hear the opening of Ghostland Observatory’s third album, and first since launching to national prominence behind one of the best live shows Austin can boast, you’d expect something of epic proportions to follow. “Opening Credits” drones along in anticipation before finally crescendoing like a steaming kettle, a trick that works wonders in building drama to the explosive burst of the band live. Unfortunately, what follows on Robotique Majestic is mostly lukewarm backwash. Robotique feels like Thomas Turner’s album, the technical maestro of the duo, and the album moves with an intense precision and each beat feeling extremely calculated, which often only serves to make it equally lacking of any life or emotion.
Ghostland has always been more of a performative force than studio project, and that live appeal largely rests on Aaron Behrens’ charismatic catharsis unloaded onstage. Robotique actually diminishes Behrens’ role – his distinctive pitching vocals are only an intermittently driving force on the album, and gone is any of the rock edge unloaded with his guitar. That’s not to say that Turner’s beats aren’t without merit or well deployed, but the aspect of GLO that has even marginally set them apart from the entirety of indie music’s fawning Daft Punk love affair was the chemistry between Turner and Behrens. Robotique’s polish behind Turner’s production never sufficiently allows Behrens to erupt unrestrained, which is what he, and the band, does best.
The better moments on the album are certainly those that allow Behrens room to work. “Dancing on My Grave” is a pure Ghostland piece that earns its sweat on the dancefloor, and “Heavy Heart” explodes with force. The best song on the album is also the one that best balances the duo’s opposing impulses, “The Band Marches On.” There is a political edge to the song that works well behind Behrens’ anxietized, breathy lines that unfurl with an appropriate restraint, while Turner adds impressive flourishes that never overwhelm the movement of the song, and the synthesized strings produce an impressive surging texture. That song is unfortunately followed with the electronic pointlessness of “Holy Ghost White Noise,” as if the album needed an interlude to let us catch our breath (which it certainly doesn’t) and the painfully screeching destruction of “FHM.”
The entire second half of the album is one misdirection after another, and while it’s good to hear Ghostland attempt to expand beyond their bread and butter electro-glam, the reaches either lack substance (even by dance rock standards) or only prove that it was never there to begin with. The Ratatat-ish instrumental “Club Soda” fades to the background and “No Place For Me” cringes a bit too painfully with Behrens’ love for Eighties hair metal vocals. Ghostland will hopefully be able to keep up the momentum they’ve earned over the past year from their live shows, but it’s likely that with the anticipation built into this release, the backlash will be pretty brutal.
Websites:
www.ghostlandobservatory.net
Myspace
