It's ironic that Dan Boeckner sings so specifically about dreaming on four of the 10 songs that make up Operators' full-length debut. While Blue Wave showcases enough synth-centric production to meet all of the requirements to recreate a genre once widely referred to as dream pop, the songs on this album teem with such agitation that it could be the photo negative of that style: nightmare pop.
Operators is the latest act from a man who has played vital roles in Wolf Parade, Handsome Furs, and Divine Fits. With this project, Boeckner—along with bandmates Sam Brown and Devojka—has discovered the secret ingredient missing from so much of the music meant to reawaken the new wave sound of the 1980s: paranoia, at a peppy tempo. Between fear of Orwellian prophesies coming true in 1984 and the Cold War machine springing to life, there was plenty to be paranoid about in the 1980s, and the current political climate demands that more music be spiked with anxiety.
There's plenty of that to spare with Blue Wave. Throughout the album, Big Brother is watching as a pervasive "they": "They come to correct you" in "Control"; "They wanna see you moving underground" in "Cold Light"; and "While we were sleeping, dreaming in our beds they moved the Earth" in "Evil." And like the best alarmist music of the Reagan era, this is all delivered with super danceable beats and synth sounds so fat and fizzy that they feel like the original analog instruments, rather than imitations by computer plug-ins. Boeckner's melodies are precise and the choruses show moments of bright clarity cutting through the foggy verses: not unlike fleeing a bleak reality to find asylum in a dream. He hasn't sounded this committed and angry since leading Atlas Strategic a decade and a half ago.
Boeckner captures a mood well, and his approach to the past is one of aggressive repurposing. Operators do à la carte shopping for 1983 tones and lyrical inspiration, boldly loading up at the buffet to get their money's worth. What could be a more fitting tribute to a decade of such excess? The title track borrows the flangey echo guitar of "I Ran," the chugging rhythm of "Major Tom (Coming Home)" and the ba-dada ba-dada sax punches of "Modern Love," a song from which Boeckner generously paraphrased lyrically on the single "Ecstasy at My House" last year. Boeckner has a history of brazenly overindulging on influences: with Handsome Furs' "All We Want, Baby, Is Everything," he borrowed so heavily that the need to legally clear a song with New Order reportedly delayed the Furs' second album. Speaking of New Order, Peter Hook's bass sound is all over Blue Wave too.
There are times when Boeckner's phrasing feels so stylized that it borders on unnatural: nobody really says "gown" in a way that rhymes with "phone." But this is what dedication sounds like. Towards the end of the album, Boeckner delivers a telling line in the song, "Nobody," when he sings, "I rip my life up and tear it apart/Before I start." This is his thing, violent reinvention, and he'll likely do it again with the upcoming Wolf Parade reunion. Here's hoping that he comes back to Operators, though if the last line of the album is any indication, it won't be for a while. "Wake up with me," he sings. And like that, the dream is over.
