Oh, what a heavy burden the Rapture must bear. When "House of Jealous Lovers" dropped out of the sky like a bomb filled with hi-hat and cowbell, it set in motion dual music-crit ripples: The rise of the internet's ultimate game-of-telephone hype, and the promise of a chiropractic procedure on the stiff spine of indie rock. The resulting frenzy over dancepunk or discopunk or indie-dance or many other compound words powered the band into a contract with Universal and buoyed the release of 2003's Echoes, still the definitive statement of 21st century indie rock rediscovering dance music.
Then, almost immediately, things began to fall apart. The internet, fickle mistress that it is, began dissipating the aura around the Rapture as quickly as it had conjured it up, with listeners speculating that they were mere puppets for the DFA, or plagiarists of the early 80s, or merely the Emperor's New Hipster Jeans. Meanwhile, dancepunk went on to disintegrate before our very eyes, flaming out even faster than most hastily-classified genres, with nobody digging past the most obvious influences (read: Gang of Four) to do more than echo Echoes. As the general opinion of the heady dancepunk days of 2003 faded into disdain, the Rapture-- as the sound's most-recognized face-- took the brunt of the negativity.
Into that unwelcome environment comes Pieces of the People We Love, the Rapture's third full-length and very patient followup to Echoes. Even with the three-year vacation, Pieces seems destined to face a tidal wave of righteous anger from those who felt scammed by dancepunk's brief promise, a piñata to absorb the beatings of the jilted. Fortunately for the band, Pieces turns out to be a strong (at times even spectacular) album, one that finds the band evolving from where they left off with Echoes while restoring some of the old hope that indie kids have, indeed, learned how to dance, and no longer have to be quite so obvious about it.
What the Rapture have returned with is a sound less concerned with retaining the raw, gritty punk half of the equation: From the fade-in harmonies and discrete four notes of bass-synth that announce the album, it's clear the group is going for a cleaner sound, surely helped by Paul Epworth and Ewan Pearson, who man the boards for eight of 10 tracks. While nothing on Pieces reaches the velveteen club-readiness of "I Need Your Love", the band's previous muddy immediacy is replaced by a more meticulous approach: the keyboards polished to a glossy sheen, the guitars eased back into a supporting role, percussion real and programmed blended seamlessly.
It's impressive then, that even with this newfound attention to detail, the Rapture still maintain a flailing energy and enthusiasm that most of the other dancepunk bands could only fake. The idea that one can, you know, actually dance to the Rapture is sometimes mocked, but tracks such as the sharp, sax-supplemented "Get Myself Into It" and the delirious Afro-funk guitar vs. merrily popping bass of "The Devil" approach that elusive concept known as "groove." As with Echoes, Luke Jenner helps the songs he sings drop their inhibitions with his loose-hinged voice, building to a fake-orgasm crescendo on "The Devil" that's absurd yet logical.
"The Devil" keeps getting mentioned, since it's one of the standout tracks on Pieces of the People We Love, all of which share a common feature, or more accurately, familial resemblance. The Talking Heads were, suspiciously, largely absent as an influence upon the dancepunk boom of 2002-03, but here the Rapture are avid pupils of their teachings, specifically mimicking the punk-to-funk transition period. I'll leave it to the caretakers of music propriety to hem and haw; the Rapture do the tribute thing well, most noticeably on "W.A.Y.U.H." where the band bottles the itchy guitars, ringtone keyboards, and pseudo-tribal chants of Remain in Light.
However, what ultimately makes Pieces a step or three down from Echoes is a drop off in consistency, reflecting a higher percentage of songs that fail to ignite. Two of these are the tracks produced by Danger Mouse (the Cee-Lo-guesting title track and "Calling Me"), which are content to coast along on fairly pedestrian beats. Even though the group sticks mostly to what they know (read: songs about dancing) and they've stopped drawing inspiration from "The Ladybug Picnic", the Rapture still sometimes trip on the untied shoelaces of their lyrics; for instance, the incessant groove of "First Gear" would eventually win listeners over if not for Matt Safer endlessly stuttering with irritating dyslexia "my-my-my Muh-Muh-Mustang Ford." Ambition also tends to get the better of them, like the "Setting Sun" vs. "Firestarter" electronica-hit pastiche of "The Sound", or the dopey psychedelia of "Live in Sunshine" (this album's counterpart to Echoes' equally out-of-place departure "Love Is All").
These missteps aren't deal-breakers, though, and for lovers of schaudenfreude expecting a Hindenburg of hype, Pieces of People We Love will be a disappointment. The time for a statement on behalf of dancepunk is probably long past; it surely died when LCD Soundsystem spat "Everyone keeps on talking about it/ Nobody's getting it done," or when it morphed into colorful dance-not-punk from the likes of the Go! Team or Cansei De Ser Sexy. But Pieces nevertheless makes a statement on behalf of the Rapture alone, that they're a group with the exuberance, the right producer rolodex, and the right ear for influences to string together multiple albums that will persist long after their newsworthiness fades.
