Melody A.M. came out quite a while ago, but if you were hoping this would be a catch-up rave or a late-breaking pan we're going to have to disappoint: Röyksopp are, ultimately, too beautiful to hate and too harmless to really love.
You might already be familiar with this Norwegian pair from their appearance on every downtempo or electronic pop compilation ever made. These compilations, which have spread across the recent musical landscape like mellowed-out and occasionally groovy dandelions, are basically the result of a few people noticing that slick-and-dreamy trip-hop and records like Air's Moon Safari could be appreciated by practically anyone: embraced by clubbers during their daytime hours, yes, and appreciated by ostensibly clued-up rock hipsters, but just as appealing to someone who never cared about being clued-up in the first place. All across the Western world, it was discovered, happy thirty-something couples with business degrees and Jettas could pick up free downtempo samplers at Crate & Barrel and-- we might imagine-- enjoy Zero 7, Badly Drawn Boy, and housed-up Dido remixes while lighting candles and taking baths. People who find this horrible will recall Dirty Vegas' "Days Go By" and call it all "music for car commercials," but on a certain level they're just being condescending and mean-spirited: People like this stuff because it's pleasant and reasonably interesting.
Röyksopp, you should know, are the heirs to exactly this lineage, having picked up the crown Air once wore and set it on top of creamy, accessible house music. Their own tracks are languid but funky, occasionally revving up into a friendly house throb and occasionally laying back into sunny crooning very much like Moon Safari's-- I'm not completely convinced "Sparks" wasn't actually on that record. Röyksopp's many compilation appearances are based in part on that, but just as much on their stunningly consistent string of truly amazing remixes-- a string that culminated last year with their getting inside the dauntingly singular world of The Streets, turning "Weak Become Heroes" inside-out into an ecstatic gush Mike Skinner would likely never have dreamed of.
The quality of those remixes is no surprise, because here's the thing: Röyksopp are master pop craftsmen, the Brian Wilsons and Burt Bacharachs of downtempo house. They know their tracks inside and out, from the subtlest sonic details, to the interplay of melodies, to the Big Picture build and flow-- and it's the pretty remarkable evidence of this on Melody A.M. that's endeared them even to many of those who think of themselves as being above easy-to-like compilation-fodder. "Eple", for instance, reconstructs vintage funky-drummer beats up against an addictively twinkly synth, all so enjoyably that it takes a while to notice details like the odd, rewinding stutter they've worked across several instruments. Or take "In Space", where loving little string swells drop off into achingly pretty harping while the remarkably complex beatwork ticks away bashfully in a corner. Call it new age pretty, Enya pretty, but hey: pretty is pretty, my friends.
Melody A.M. is full of this stuff-- the stuff some people call "sophisticated" and "organic," the stuff others might rightly identify as "house for people who don't actually like house" or "ambient for people who don't actually like ambient." The best moments, oddly, seem to come both from Röyksopp's devoting themselves entirely to this accessibility and from dropping their guard on it. On "Röyksopp's Night Out" they allow themselves to break into a free-flowing and slightly less restrained darkness, just enough for you to wish they'd try their hands at a full-on rage; immediately afterward, though, they've erased that wish by assembling another shyly sunny patter for King of Convenience-turned-downtempo-crooner Erlend Øye to sing-song winsomely over. ("Poor Leno", the album's most successful single, has Øye voicing a lullaby hook over a rich, subtly mutating, and equally charming groove.) The worst moments, unsurprisingly, come when Röyksopp go generically downtempo and then miss the mark-- witness the vocals on "A Higher Place".
The total package is, by any measure, a flagship release: This is likely the most solid, confident, and generally pleasurable downtempo full-length you'll be hearing for a while. Whether that means it's a must-buy, more well-meaning nondescript bubbling, or end-of-the-world car-commercial music has to be left to you. My vote may not be the first of those options, but at times it comes reasonably close.
