aaamusic | On 16, Aug 2011

If you’re anything like me, the first thing you’ll notice about Brooklyn solo artist Cassettes Won’t Listen (Known to his mum as Jason Drake) is his utterly uncanny vocal resemblance to Hot Chip singer Alexis Taylor. Seriously, it’s identical. That’s a very good thing. His delicate, tuneful sigh goes with his brand of doleful electro seamlessly, case in point on album highpoint Perfect Day, where the relaxed yet blissfully happy vibe combines to make something quite beautiful, like Ben Gibbard’s The Postal Service covering The Stone Roses’ Waterfall. Somewhat unfortunately, the rest of the album doesn’t quite fit the same way, save for the delicate, piano led pop of Harp Darkness.

 

For most part it follows the same template set by first single The Echoes, whip-sharp dubstep shaped pop songs with Drake’s keening voice, distorted in some way floating over the top. On The Echoes, this is intensely exciting, but as ever, repetition makes everything lose it’s shine, Stuck and Pick Me Out follow this template very closely, and Wave To The Winners’ lurch into dubstep just sounds desperate, far, I’m sure, from the effect Drake was hoping for. This is also not helped by some clunky, melodramatic lyrics either, like this gem from The Night Shines, “It was cloudy so you couldn’t see a thing… the night shines/ We all fall down.” It’s telling that Drake’s last LP, 2009’s Into The Hillside was entirely instrumental and received much better than this particular record was.

 

So in essence, this is a pretty standard pop album, one or two truly classic songs (The Echoes and Perfect Day) surrounded by stuff that tries to sound like it but can’t match the sheer exuberance of either of them, by all means get your hands on the latter two mentioned tracks  by any means necessary, but you honestly don’t need much else from this album.

 

Author: Will Howard