I honestly tried to give it the benefit of the doubt. One look at the ridiculously cheesy cover art made me fear that the contents were going to be just as bad. Turns out that I was right. The debut project of The Sleepy Jackson’s Luke Steele and Pnau’s Nick Littlemore is labeled as “electro-psychedelic.” There’s nothing psychedelic about it. At best, the album is an unwarranted imitation of ’80s electro-pop. It’s Prince minus the funk. In fact, Steele spends most of the album vainly attempting to mimic his piercing falsetto, not to mention his massive ego and flamboyant style of dress. I am not a fan of mimicry and certainly not a poor attempt at it such as this one. This album has been receiving rave reviews and honestly I can’t understand why. Track after track comes off as nothing more than Steele moaning out cliched imagery over production that might have sounded cutting edge 30 years ago. Lyrics like, “Never looking down I’m just in awe of what’s in front of me/ Is it real now? When two people become one,” show Steele’s lack of imagination when it comes to songwriting. One of the few tracks that actually didn’t make me want to instinctively hit the skip button is “Swordfish Hotkiss Night.” Catchy syncopated rhythms and decent bounce to the production make it the only track where the whole Prince impersonation thing kind of works. Thankfully this album is only 10 tracks long, otherwise I don’t think I could have sat all the way through it. I had trouble enough as it is.
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