Steven Lind, the singer for the Canadian trio Freak Heat Waves, has the kind of voice you might expect to hear from a talking turtle in a children’s movie. He drawls his words in a cartoonishly low monotone, elongating the last syllable of each line beyond reason (“prove it’s good,” in the song “Let It Go,” becomes “Prooove/It’s gooooood-uh”). In a normal band, a voice like this might seem to be a liability. But on their fourth album, Zap the Planet, Freak Heat Waves dispense with any illusions of the ordinary, concocting a suite of warped synth-pop grooves coated in Lind’s slow-talking sleaze.
It’s their best album to date, if not exactly the sound Freak Heat Waves first became known for. The trio emerged from the Midwestern Canadian prairies a decade ago, amassing a small following in Canada’s art-punk scene and soon performing alongside better-known peers like Preoccupations (then Viet Cong) and Odonis Odonis, with whom they share a label. Following some well-received cassettes, the band’s self-titled debut arrived in 2012, co-produced by the late Christopher Reimer of Women and sharing more than a passing likeness with that band’s serrated post-punk temperament.
On more recent albums, particularly 2018’s Beyond XXXL, Freak Heat Waves veered in the direction of goth rock and synth-heavy industrial. But the songs were often sludgy and a bit muddled, as though the band sought to mimic the texture of their singer’s vocals. Zap the Planet succeeds because of the odd tension between Lind’s dour delivery and the brightest, most exuberant grooves of the band’s career—a trick of contrast that their fellow countryman Leonard Cohen perfected on I’m Your Man. Tellingly, the least compelling tracks here are the two instrumentals, including opener “Off Axis,” a pleasant but perfunctory soundcheck of assorted synth textures. It’s not bad, but sounds like a mere warm-up for what’s to come.
The album apparently owes its vintage electro sound to the band’s increasing interest in analog synths and early MIDI technology. The result is an uncommonly funky and hypnotic album. Fizzy, dueling layers of synths lead the way on highlights like “Busted” and “I’m Zapped”; the tempos are crisper and the production clearer than before, all the better to foreground Lind’s devilish croon. On the album’s centerpiece, “Dripping Visions,” he’s at his best, brooding over an unsettling encounter as the band stacks drum machines and live percussion on top of each other to maximize the pulsating groove. The group sought an arrangement that would be “as groovy as it was off-putting,” and surely succeeded.
Freak Heat Waves’ affinity for sci-fi futurism has been a recurring element—the band routinely cites dystopian films like Robocop and A Clockwork Orange as influences and once described their 2015 song “Design of Success” (which is briefly sampled on Zap the Planet’s “Let It Go”) as a “strange and sexy look into an alien nightclub.” That aesthetic takes over on “I’m Zapped,” in which Lind narrates his descent into some peculiar, perhaps supernatural addiction: “It’s messing with my head/Zapped on my mattress/Zapped on my toilet.” Lyrically, it’s the kind of cheekily paranoid punk song you might expect to find on an early Cramps album.
Yet the record’s title flips it into an active verb—Zap the Planet. It’s a small gesture that crystalizes this band’s implicit mission of making the world a little freakier. Freak Heat Waves remain largely unknown to American audiences, but this album makes a convincing case for making their acquaintance.
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