[rating=5.00]
Lifelong friends and native New Yorkers Alex Frankel and Nick Millhiser have been kicking around the indie dance-pop scene for a few years now. Long enough to earn some rave reviews for their previous work, 2010’s Static on the Wire EP and 2011’s self-titled full-length, but due to their still relatively youthful ages, not long enough to have actually experienced firsthand the sweeping ‘80’s disco scene they’ve mined as part of their own sound. That uplifting, carefree, and party all night long ethos has made a comeback and has struck a chord with listeners in this decade, resonating with revelers looking to mix it up in late-night clubs, bars, and house parties. Somewhat surprisingly, the sound has translated to the masses too, as bands and artists honing these beats have commanded the big stages on the large scale summer festival scenes over the past few seasons.
As Holy Ghost!, Frankel and Millhiser’s dance sensibilities certainly make the listener bounce around with excitement and energy. Their latest release, Dynamics traffics in groove and rhythm, as its propulsive beats rattle the ear drums and shuffle the feet. It’s not music meant for idle listening as their influences are all thrown together into slinky synth beats, hooky Casio-tinged earworms, and glittering squeals of percussion. When it works best, like on the album-opening one-two punch of “Okay” and “Dumb Disco Ideas” (an eight-minute burner of a track), or the strikingly plaintive “Don’t Look Down”, the resulting sound proves to be simply and completely arresting. It’s a sound you can’t help but lock into and lose yourself in, whether your habitat is one of those aforementioned dance clubs and music festivals, or simply the sidewalk or open road in front of you.
However, the album as a whole never truly seems to stick. There’s a bit of meandering and plodding that tends to bog down the sound and impedes the cohesiveness. The lyrics also fail to fully materialize as they tend to center around big-picture ideas like death, decay, and vapidity without fully saying anything astute or particularly memorable. And while some may argue that lyrics aren’t necessarily an essential element of dance music, it is however important to have something to say if an entire album is to be made. The album is fine as a piecemeal mixtape of key tracks, but all together it seems to lack, frankly, “dynamics.” It’s a fine listen, but nothing that screams “must have”.
As their backed by James Murphy’s powerhouse DFA label, Holy Ghost! will be back with more to say and more dance party sounds to dish out. Hopefully, the cohesiveness will begin to take a little more shape and the individual flashes can turn into something more altogether gratifying and consequential.
