Pop vocalists who are limited to three or four notes usually go one of two directions. They either drown their vocals in noise and render them "just another instrument," saving their imagination for new daisy chains of effects pedals (see Labradford, Flying Saucer Attack) or they spend time on lyrics and make albums that may as well be filed under spoken word (latter-day Lou Reed and Leonard Cohen). If your voice is such that the mathematical possibilities of melodic variation are exhausted in four bars, the last thing you want to do is make music in a style where the tune is usually the focus.
This ill-advised third path is where German duo Tarwater treads on their fifth album, *The Needle Was Travelling * . Eleven of the 14 tracks here are mid-tempo and musically reminiscent of 80s synthpop (updated with modern technology, of course), a genre with a rich history of hummable tunes. Unfortunately, vocalist Ronald Lippok (also of To Rococo Rot) is physically incapable of singing anything of the sort. The songs coming from his dour, uninflected voice-- which is constantly doubled to fill out the mix-- could be played on a keyboard by an armless dude with a pencil in his mouth. Even when Tarwater manage to get something cool going instrumentally (which happens occasionally), the vocals squash the life out of the track.
Exception: "Jackie", a fine little tune carried by the lovely melodica that fills in the choruses, pushing the song in directions the singing alone could never take it. "Jackie" is catchy with an unusual arrangement and is worth tracking down. The other standout is the instrumental "Stone", a cheerful slice of technopop with a great squiggly synth hook and a disposition indebted to Kraftwerk's vision of technology's sunny future. After that, it gets pretty grim. The backing music on *The Needle Was Travelling * is a lush and generally appealing mix of guitars and synths, blended together in such a way that instrumental differentiation is difficult. As far as production goes, Tarwater remains proficient. But songs need to be judged as songs, and these aren't very good.
