A former member of Danish chamber-pop group Choir of Young Believers, singer/songwriter and producer Anders Rhedin splits his time between Copenhagen, Berlin, and Los Angeles—in the last of these locales, he found work as a professional songwriter for the likes of Kid Cudi and Josh Groban, though he has compared his commercial pop songwriting effort to "black magic." From 2012 to 2014, Rhedin released a handful of cassette- and vinyl-only EPs under the Dinner moniker, leading the generally fantastic indie-rock label Captured Tracks to sign him in 2014 and issue a compilation, Three EPs: 2012-2014. A tour with labelmate Mac DeMarco followed.
It's less clear from this debut outing if Dinner has the tracks to match Rhedin's impressive trajectory. Three EPs was a relatively varied outing, as suits its cobbled-together origins, but it introduced Rhedin's darkly deadpan take on ’80s synth-pop like the Simple Minds or Psychedelic Furs, complete with an alternate-universe novelty hit: the queasily catchy "Going Out," which sneaks a tale of a druggy night on the town into what could be mistaken for an awkward invitation to go on a date ("Do you feel like going out tonight?"). Three EPs also presented Rhedin's unique vocal style, primarily a goofy baritone that must be how Stephin Merritt sounds to people who don't like the Magnetic Fields.
On Psychic Lovers, Rhedin still sings like a failed Muppet auditioner, and layers more studio gloss on the new-wave noir template of "Going Out," but without any song as modestly pleasant. Rhedin has billed the album as "like sexual Christian rock ... but without all the Christianity," and, frankly, being asked to go out with him worked better when it wasn't really a come-on. Here, he's a "normal guy" longing for something to "Turn Me On." He wants "What You Got." He'd love to spend one night with you, because "in your smile's a nuclear bomb," and you, person whose hips have "oscillations" as you walk down the street, own "The World" ("Every world belongs to you," to be more precise). The neon-glowing production is all just so, but the enjoyment we're supposed to get out of this lyrical mix of the portentous and the trite, and that gawky vocal delivery, in a world where The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink soundtracks have already existed for decades, with proper singing and catchy hooks and everything, isn't clear.
Psychic Lovers does try out a few different hues within its fairly limited palette, but they mainly just add to the confusion. Sentimental slow-dance candidate "Kali, Take Me Home" showcases a children's choir and has a title that evokes the powerful Hindu goddess of creation and destruction. "A.F.Y." explores dubwise vocal effects and clanging distortion. "Holy Fuck!" languidly addresses not the sex, but the "sexless fighting spells," imploring, "Leave behind the lies." Closer to the ’60s art-pop mode that occasionally surfaced on Three EPs is "Lie," with its Nico-like guitar strums and orchestral touches; there's a choral backing vocal here, too. "Wake Up" has a tropical-house flavor and describes, guess what, waking up in various locales "with you."
Rhedin's approach here theoretically could work. As the Nico comparison suggests, unconventional voices can turn out to be the most enduring, and even within the niche that critic Liz Colville once described on Pitchfork as "boys with perpetual colds who can kinda-sorta sing" you can find overlooked nuggets from bands like Seattle's BOAT or Sweden's Suburban Kids With Biblical Names. As for the realm of so-fake-it's-real '80s sendup, Ariel Pink stands out for his eccentricity, while John Maus delivers chest-beating live performances and cerebral songcraft, which brings us to the stage-devouring neo-New Romanticism of justly revered band Future Islands. The subtle but crucial difference, as with anything else—including Christian sex without the Christianity—is in how you do it.
