Tim Felton and Billy Bainbridge released their first single as Seeland way back in 2005 on the Duophonic Super 45s mini-label, an imprint known for housing groups with functional-sounding names that fetishized the mundanity of music technology: Stereolab, Felton's band Broadcast, Imitation Electric Piano, Arcwelder. Even the name of Bainbridge's own cultishly admired former group Plone sounded onomatopoeic, like a reference tone seeping out of a 60s-era electronics workshop. The title of the duo's long-simmering first LP, Tomorrow Today, signals the same sort of retro-futurism, but they're pulling from a slightly different palette.
Deciphering that palette is part of the fun, too. Plone's geekily majestic sci-fi mini symphonies barely register, and Broadcast's glassy analog grooves are all but invisible. Felton and Bainbridge named the project after track two from Neu! '75, and while there's a whiff of that song's guitar tone and sterile atmosphere, they're content to double-time its tempo-- only two songs on Tomorrow crack the four-minute mark. Hell, with the exception of the Switched On organeering of "Captured", if someone were to play me Tomorrow blindly, and tell me that it's "Gruff Rhys making a Joe Meek tribute album," I wouldn't bat an eyelash. Felton's vocals distinctly recall Rhys' warm, fuzzy timbre; the songs-- at least on the first half of the record-- are immaculate, hook-laden new wave; and there's enough studio flim-flammery to drive me toward eBay and YouTube for a Meek fix.
At its best, Tomorrow Today is top-notch romantic synth-pop with a weirdo edge. There's nothing paradigm-shifting here, but these two have never been known for reinventing the wheel as much as finding new ways to make antique wheels roll. The love songs are the best songs: "Turnaround" is gothy and gossamer, billowing synths surrounding a sunny-but-bashful melody that only slightly rises out of its daydream for the chorus, and "Captured" sets some punny Numan/Kraftwerkisms ("I will not be turned off") to an upshifted tempo and a rhythm bed set to puree. But there's a darker side, too. Opener "Burning Pages" may burst out of its dispassionate frame with a pitch-jumping chorus, but that chorus is __"__Burning pages, nothing more,/ Life will leave you, of that i'm sure." "Hang on Lucifer" is, well, called that, and does contain the creepy line "In the light that leads to a blindness, he crept in, quietly serene," but its chippy guitars and non-stop sound effects button-pushing makes it, like "Colour Dream", sound like an early-century SFA demo.
Tomorrow remains compelling through "Static Object", the record's closest thing to a Joy Division moment, but then limps out over its last third, mired in a tone/tempo bog that reveals the group's soft spots and least-appealing features. "Pretty Bird" and "Station Sky" pack plenty of studio whirlygigs, but they lack either compelling hooks or a propulsive rhythm. "Call the Incredible" is Seeland's idea of a slow-building dramatic epic, and a lyric like __"__You can be anything that you choose, it's up to you" indicates how much the whole bit feels like a phone-in. They started the LP by showing a refreshing knack for cranking out effortlessly catchy patch-cord pop, then end it by falling victim to the preset function. In terms of prolificacy, their definitions of "tomorrow" and "today" seem to only loosely resemble my own, but if they want to take less than five years to record a followup, I'd be more than happy to see LP two lean more toward the earlier part of this record than the later.
