The breezy yet meticulous music of Norway's Casiokids sneaks up on you. It radiates earnestness and simplicity, which can obscure the fine inner workings. Watery vocal hooks and refrains tug at your ear first, but it's the tiny moving parts and lathed instrumental motifs that really get lodged there. This works out to either a kind of failure for a persona-seeking indie-pop band or a kind of success for an atmospheric dance band, two spheres Casiokids have always seemed slightly adrift between, to intriguing but muddying effect. After a scrappy debut and a singles collection disguised as a sophomore album, you might consider this their first shot at a "mature" record-- meaning more lavishly recorded, majestically played, and ambitious in scope. Maturity can be tricky to navigate for bands that have established themselves in the symbolic context of childhood.
At this point, Casiokids are a synth-pop band only in the same, broad sense that the Flaming Lips (whose multimedia extravaganzas must have been an influence on their celebratory live show) are a psych-pop band. Big sing-alongs, Western house and disco beats, and squiggly analog synths are important elements of their sound, but no more so than Afro-Caribbean percussion, beatific 1960s pop, swarming funk guitars, and (especially as of Aabenbaeringen Over Aaskammen) gnarled psychedelia that drives the Flaming Lips comparison more firmly home. After about seven years in the game, they're no longer a motley crew of promising upstarts-- they're actually kind of a big deal. Their records are distributed all over the world (Universal in Norway, Polyvinyl in the U.S.) and they were one of four recipients of a million-kroner grant from Norwegian pop gods A-Ha. If they still seem fringe-y here in the States, it may be because the communal pageantry of their live show is an indispensible aspect of their music. Somehow, their loopy mishmash of styles just makes more sense when you're dancing with giant puppets under seizure-inducing lights.
So here's the weird thing about Aabenbaringen Over Aaskammen: I like almost every song on it, but they don't add up to an album I love. It's not quite hype enough to be pure party music and lacks the cohesive point of view that fosters a more personal connection with a record. At first I thought Casiokids sounded like a different band on every song, but that wasn't quite right. It's more like the same band trying on different looks, different ideas of what a band that got a million-kroner grant from A-Ha should maybe sound like. Aabenbaringen is actually more all-over-the-place than the singles collection. The stately orchestration of the opening track might make you think you've wandered into the wrong Norwegian record by accident. Lead single "Det Haster!" recalls the electro-funk of "Fot I Hose", but built from commanding slabs rather than twitchy bursts, indicative of a general deepening and swelling of Casiokids' sound. Meanwhile, "Dresinen" sounds like a post-punk Dungen and the very catchy "Golden Years" is tropics-kissed indie-pop. No one's saying a band should only make one kind of song, but it takes a strong identity to make eclecticism feel personalized. I hear lots of cool grooves and marvelous texture, but I have trouble connecting them to anything beyond that.
Still, a vivid, decorative imagination makes these songs fun to glide along. "Det Haster!" begins with a bad-stereo-connection fake-out that will have you jiggling the pin in your speaker jack before it comes roaring into full 3D. The intro of "London Zoo", a coasting drums-and-synths haze evocative of Au Revoir Simone, features some of the most lusciously precise pin-pricks of guitar you'll encounter. The arpeggiated synth lead of "Olympiske Leker" morphs from voicing to voicing with unruffled ease. But no amount of microscopic detail feels sufficient without forming a bigger picture. This one's fun but kind of blurry, perhaps capturing a band in a moment of transition between anarchic youth and... whatever happens next.
