Two years ago, Cecil Frena's band Gobble Gobble was at the center of a burgeoning artistic collective of Canadian electronic artists that spread from his native Edmonton to Montreal: demonstrative both sonically and visually, committed but goofy, manically dancing on stage, using hockey gear for percussion... that kind of thing. In 2012, he's still in the middle of things but a lot more people are paying attention. His friend and colleague Claire Boucher has become indie's breakout star of the year as Grimes and his former bandmates in Gobble Gobble aren't far behind: that would be Megan James and Corin Roddick of Purity Ring.
Little Sleepwalker, Frena's first official album as Born Gold, doesn't have the populist ambitions of his peers, but after last year's free singles compilation Bodysongs, it does show an intent to be taken seriously. He's dialed down the theatrical Xiu Xiu influence (while showcasing a darker tone), ditches the snow shovel guitars he wielded as Gobble Gobble, and has changed the name from Gobble Gobble to something that looks more like that of a headliner. (I mean, he did his first interview with Forbes.) But while Little Sleepwalker is noticeably slicker and more fluid than Gobble Gobble or Bodysongs, the tradeoff is that it's almost impossible to grasp.
The deviation from Gobble Gobble's more overt hyperactivity will surely be seen as progress, but Born Gold's music is every bit as fractured, the colder and darker hues of the constituent pieces making it sound more mature and workmanlike. There are plenty of layers signifying activity, but not much depth signifying achievement: pitched electronic drum rolls, Far East vocal modes, 808 claps, and juddering synth lines all fight for space amidst dubbed-out sound effects. If you and a couple friends decided to give Silent Shout the Zaireeka treatment, or Of Montreal donned raven masks instead of Technicolor dreamcoats ca. Skeletal Lamping, there'd be precedent for this.
Amidst all this clutter, hooks do arise occasionally almost by default: a surprisingly sour melodic turn during "That Way", a pinched intonation of "cadaverous time" on "Lethe". As Frena told Forbes, Little Sleepwalker "is going to be disorienting... because pop is usually on the throne and not the vivisection table." But so much of what goes on between these rare hooks feels like unnecessary surgery. It's a rhythm-centric record whose production overlays what might be incompatible edges of dubstep (Burial version), footwork, hip-hop, EDM, and straight electro-pop. Though little of it achieves the momentum required to dance to it for longer than a minute, Little Sleepwalker's greatest asset is currency, giving just enough of itself to pretty much every electronic subgenre a pop fan might be curious about these days.
You do sense a streak of curiosity from Born Gold that will also play well amongst the kids. As with Purity Ring, Frena's main takeway from the Knife has less to do with arepeggiators than the freeing effects of vocal manipulation. It's a lot easier to indulge in character studies or outré ideas when the right filters make you believe you can be anybody. Or you could be nobody, that's a possibility as well. Rather than creating new perspectives, highlighting the emotional tenor of certain lyrics, or even introducing contradictory textures, Frena mostly just fucks with sound whenever the feeling moves him, clicking at new tabs like a bored office drone.
The randomly denatured vocals simply blending into the mix leeched of melody and artifice, and if the words of Little Sleepwalker are meant to carry much weight, he's not tipping us off to it. Occasionally, an image like "lift your shivering knees and sleepwalk through the woods" comes through the labyrinth of filters, and it's a clue that Frena might've shared a few lyrical ideas with Purity Ring when they were putting their first songs together. The second half of Little Sleepwalker does away with most of the vocals and straightens out rhythmically, and for better or worse, it's much easier to just zone out. A spree of impressionistic titles ("Sky Bicycle", "Black Sonar", "Gauze Pillars") aren't particularly descriptive of the contents therein, but are about all you can do to differentiate them from each other.
Though Bodysongs and Little Sleepwalker were meant to be an introduction to Born Gold's new artistic M.O. in tandem, it's not all that far off from what I heard having seen Gobble Gobble open for damn near everyone who was everyone over the past couple of years. It's not necessarily bad or inept, but it's missing something on record-- either a captivating visual element, the approval of a jacked-up crowd, or at least a point of view. Undoubtedly, Born Gold's of-the-minute sound and associations will find him in bigger rooms, but that last part in particular explains why Little Sleepwalker feels like Frena keeping pacing with his now more well-known friends while remaining a step behind.
