Much of the current wave of aggressive, pop-oriented dance music can be traced to 2005. That year, Madonna's late-career foray into Eurodance, Confessions on a Dancefloor marked the last time she'd be ahead of the curve, while French Touch veteran Alan Braxe attracted indie types to glittery hedonism with his stellar singles comp The Upper Cuts. Meanwhile, the teeth-grinding one-two French electro-punch of Justice's antagonistic Waters of Nazareth 12" and Daft Punk's oft-maligned Human After All now sound strangely prescient.
Vitalic, real name Pascal Arbez, fit in with those last two artists in the middle of the last decade. Four years after releasing the stacked Poney EP, he dropped OK Cowboy, a dizzying collection of loopy, buzzy electro that would work for any 2010s HARD Fest attendee. If that album was a series of bright, loud firecrackers, then 2009's Flashmob resembled a slow-burning candle, as it found the French producer adding shades of sultry disco to his palette. It was a fine album, but the low-key aesthetic and lack of big singles lessened its impact.
Three years later, we have Rave Age, Arbez's third proper LP as Vitalic. The title seems to address youth culture's current embrace of big-box electronic music, and the record looks toward past glories, too. Rave Age's first two singles, "No More Sleep" and "Stamina", bring to mind OK Cowboy's more audacious moments, right down to the latter's cheesy "Crank it up!" vocal sample. "Rave Kids Go" aims for a similar mood but the slow buzzsaw builder is anchored by a rare lead vocal, courtesy of Michael Karkousse of Belgian outfit Goose. Karkousse's vocal initially recalls the kind of smoky vocal take you'd hear on a Chemical Brothers album but when he moves from sleazy to shouty on the song's bridge, it comes across as forced.
The streamlined vocal cuts don't all work, but at least Arbez seems engaged on them. The gritty "La Mort Sur Le Dance Floor" features a snotty performance from French singer Rebeka Warrior that should be avoided as long as Crystal Castles are going, but "Under Your Sun" fares better thanks to airy, hollow production and a perfectly competent high-register touch from fellow countrywoman Owlle. The standout from the pop cuts is "Fade Away", featuring an arena-scale tender take from Shitdisco's Joe Reeves. It works in part because it's the most straightforwardly gorgeous thing on the record, but for me the real appeal is how its structure parallels Saint Etienne's head-in-the-clouds remix of the Drums' "Forever and Ever Amen".
And that's the album's biggest problem: Rave Age makes you wish you were listening to other songs. The closer you listen to the wobbly hip-hop textures, overly-busy techno, and generic dark ambience, the less the album needs to exist. Maximalism has frequently been Arbez's thing-- it's the quality that made him rise to some sort of prominence to begin with. But on Rave Age, he does too much of everything and sounds mostly like a whole lot of nothing.
