On his debut album as Alaska in Winter, Dance Party in the Balkans, Brandon Bethancourt employed A Hawk and a Hacksaw's Heather Trost and Beirut's Zach Condon to flesh out his odd brand of vocoder-glazed indie pop. On that record, he managed to locate a middle ground between Balkan folk, Byzantine religious music, and the breakbeats rattling the trunks of his native Santa Fe. His aesthetic worked best at its extremes: the jittery beats of "Balkan Lowrider Anthem" at one pole, the hazy "Lovely Lovely Love" at the other. The middle range was pretty but equivocal, and Bethancourt came off like a talented pop musician slightly embarrassed by pop.
But whatever obscurity prevailed upon Dance Party in the Balkans disperses on Holiday. It's a collection of chromed synth hymns aimed straight at your pleasure centers, with zero concessions to so-called difficulty. "Berlin" announces Bethancourt's newfound clarity and the place that fostered it (he spent six months making the album there): the synths are torqued into gleaming waves, the bassline is glued to the one-beat, and thwacking snares keep dropping in and out so we can relish the surge over and over.
The Berlin microsound infiltrates the album only slightly; mostly, it's dominated by slabby 4/4 anthems. The locale's direct influence is more practical-- since Bethancourt had no instruments with him, his use of programmed synths and drums was compulsory. Because things like ukulele and vocals by Trost were added later, they never derail the rock-solid foundations as they sometimes did on the first album. Even the slightest song here, the ambivalently shuffling "Knorrpromenade", packs almost as much wallop as Dance Party's most emphatic moments.
If Bethancourt's musical style is considerably refined on Holiday, his voice remains its centerpiece. He's still a dead ringer for Condon, although the minimization of folksy idioms helps him forge a more distinct identity of his own. He rolls out chorus after wafting chorus, harmonizing with his natural voice through a vocoder, thereby lending it a serrated edge. These are the kinds of songs that are impossible to sing without your eyes prayerfully closed, and Bethancourt's earnestness helps to sell his goofy lyrics about speed boats to heaven (on the splashy electro-pop nursery rhyme of the same name, an album highlight) and girls dying in his arms (on the percolating-then-gushing "Highlander Pt. 1", a hammy tragi-romantic duet with Trost).
Bethancourt likes to establish punchy patterns and flog them for all they're worth. The second part of "Highlander" brings in a new lyrical motif-- "I don't want to live forever," he sings, rising and falling over each word-- but mostly sticks to reshuffling the scudding bass line, fizzy snares, and synth loops of its predecessor. The first two parts of "Streetgang" tinker with a buzzy theme that gains a powerful thrust with the introduction of trills and glossy chords in the song's third part. You can feel Bethancourt's enthusiasm, how he likes the parts so much he wants to see how they fit together in every possible permutation. Given the seductive simplicity of his loops, that enthusiasm is easy to share.
Holiday would be a fine album at any moment, but it seems especially timely right now. Let's take a quick inventory: The contours are stark and sleek, and it burns with a weirdly cold heat. The production is elaborate in a streamlined way, the melodies infectious. A sentimental digi-crooner is orbited by hums and blips, as if rendering your voice and music robotic gives you carte blanche to be messily human, even maudlin. Sound familiar? Suddenly, and just in time for the holidays, it's as if indie pop fans immune to the charms of Kanye West have an 808's and Heartbreak of their very own.
