The Chain Gang of 1974 is the kind of band name that is so obviously apropos of nothing that it pretty much begs to be met head-on. So let's just get some painfully obvious housekeeping out of the way: Kamtin Mohager's glossy synth-pop project sounds absolutely nothing like a chain gang and even less like 1974. Instead, the album stresses familiarity, easy nostalgia, and an eagerness to please, laying down its dividing lines like the "80s Night" at your local undergrad bar: If you can somehow find novelty in that sort of thing in 2011, you'll have yourself a blast, whereas anyone who thinks the decade had more to offer than doing tequila shots to "Hungry Like the Wolf" while Pretty in Pink plays in closed captioning are gonna feel like killjoys through no real fault of their own.
I'll give Mohager this: The dude knows how to write a hook. The arc of the melodies, the word choice, the decision of when to crank the reverb and when to lay off-- all are indicative of someone who's broken down the hits of his childhood into formulae, their moving parts charted and graphed. Nearly every track on Wayward Fire makes some sort of ascendant grab at a brass ring, and displaying a skill that's often underrated, Mohager can string together fairly basic rhymes in a way that gives just enough meaning. And he can lose himself in whatever guise is appropriate to get his point across. "I get so high when the devil comes to take me/ I get so high when the devil is a lady," is delivered by an agitated disco infiltrator, while a New Romantic on the verge of emotional overload promises, "I will run, I will fly, I will see you in a matter of time." That sort of thing.
Problem is, there's a lot of Wayward Fire that takes place between those choruses. More to the point, there's a lot of Wayward Fire period: at nearly an hour long, it surpasses audacity into the realm of pure self-defeat. There are pleasures to be had here, but every single track could comfortably shave about a minute and a half and still deliver them. It's less of an issue when he's courting bedside melodrama as opposed to dancefloor seduction since Mohager sounds more comfortable navigating verse/chorus structure than a vamp. And when he tries dance music, his idle hands mostly get the better of him. Wayward Fire continually misses a sweet spot between being lean and dirty enough to aerodynamically groove and being maximalist to the point where it opts out of that mode completely. And as a result, there's always that one last addition to the mix that sticks in your craw.
I suppose that it's a sign of where we're at, that an LP so steeped in 80s signifiers feels so completely... normal. But while certainly dedicated to its source material, Mohager's lack of commitment to any sonic or lyrical identity unintentionally confirms the old stereotypes that kept this stuff out of indie rock in the first place-- that it can't be made personal and that its ultimate goal is to be fashionable and disposable. Though clearly precocious with melodies, Mohager never presents himself as more than collector, which is why Wayward Fire ends up less like a living celebration of the past and more like a display case of your favorite synth-pop action figures in their original packaging.
