Tobiasz Biliński’s Perfect Son is a descendant of sophisti-pop, a British style from the 1980s that wielded the polished and pristine elements of jazz and soft rock as a reaction against punk. Though few people besides music critics actually use the term, sophisti-pop’s influence lingers: Last year marked the 30th anniversary of Talk Talk’s post-rock god particle Spirit of Eden, while the 1975’s “Love It if We Made It” was explicitly modeled upon the Blue Nile’s “The Downtown Lights.” The “sophisticated” part refers to the traits that elevate albums like Perfect Son’s Cast above the fray, regardless of trends: arch lyricism, fussy melodies, and unblemished musicianship on lavish equipment. Cast embodies all of these qualities perhaps too well—it’s surely a curious fit on a label like Sub Pop.
As Perfect Son’s debut, following a string of records Biliński released as Coldair, Cast stresses themes of self-discovery and transformation, and it does manage a more intense physical experience than it initially lets on. The full-band drop on “Reel Me” is a satisfying HD wallop, while “Promises” and “My Body Wants” are callbacks to the brief, pre-millennial merger of big beat and Britrock. There’s enough blunt-force low end and percussive jolt to give the impression of a much nastier and heavier album, if Cast wasn’t so beholden to production values that warrant a 70% marginal tax rate. But Biliński mostly nods to trip-hop without the drugs or industrial without the kink and abrasion. In that sense, Cast is also rooted in late-1990s singer-songwriter records where the flavors of edgier genres were simply misted on like essential oils.
I assume the point of it all is that Biliński’s blue-eyed soul vocals are in constant combat with his red-blooded desires—“Fill your lungs/Feel love and feel lust,” he sings over the mechanical shuffle of “It’s for Life.” His lyrics frequently scan as elemental and carnal: He admits to “murderous thoughts” on a saintly stretch of “So Divine” and is engulfed by a “wildfire I cannot tame” while he goes “off the rails” during the trans-European metronomy of “Promises.” But Biliński is can only tell rather than show: a song actually called “Lust” declares, “I am turned over/I parted with bad blood... I’m filling up with lust,” and something’s either lost in translation or just a misunderstanding of how desire really works.
If you’re going to use the word “perfect” in your band name, it helps to have a developed sense of irony. Despite their considerable differences, Perfect Pussy and A Perfect Circle do share a subversive streak. Perfect Son, not so much. Everything about Cast, from its high-end synths and imperious production to Biliński’s alabaster vocals, is superficially flawless and taken at face value; most of one’s time with the album is spent looking for cracks, hooks, or anything resembling a personality. The thing about perfection in art isn’t just that it’s unattainable—it’s also uninteresting.
