There are two ways of looking at Dominique Leone: as an electronic artist obsessed with pop music, or a pop musician with a serious tech fetish. What makes his debut full-length so appealing is that it matches both descriptions. Leone mixes crafty melody with digital wizardry so smoothly, it's hard to say where one side of his musical personality ends and the other begins. A frequent rock critic (primarily for Pitchfork), Leone has wide range in both taste and background (his press kit calls him "classically trained"). But Dominique Leone doesn't sound like a collection of influences, a sampling of references, or a compendium of ideas. It's impressively organic, with detailed compositions that neither hide artifice nor flaunt it. Leone seems to have eyes in the back of his head, watching pop history while pushing it forward.
The pop history Leone prefers could roughly be described as groups infatuated with sugary melodies, and using the studio to craft and enhance them. Think Beatles, Beach Boys, and ELO, up through Todd Rundgren, XTC, and ABBA. But Leone's buoyant tunes and high-pitched voice are more than mimicry. For every song that sounds like Pet Sounds or Skylarking, there's one that conjures less-predictable comparisons. I often hear the helium-injected whine of Mark Davies of Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 in Leone's singing, and other listeners will find their own touchstones, making Dominique Leone a kind of electro-pop mood ring whose day-glo hues change with each listen.
Leone opens the album with a few seconds of his voice run backwards. This might be the only instance where his singing stands alone-- usually he buries it under layers of sound and processing. But his voice is the center of each tune, and it allows him to make active mixes that never get overly busy, since they're always based on simple vocal melodies. On the delirious "Sim", hyper synths whir past his chorused croons, while in "Duyen" radio samples and ringing phones rhyme with his Jeff Lynne-style hums. The effect is often funny, and even goofy-- take the most contagious piece, "Nous Tombons Dans Elle", which sounds like a club track, a Dr. Demento remix, and a Japanese TV ad rolled into one. There are also moments of noise and abstraction, reflecting Leone's love of figures as divergent as Debussy, Harry Nilsson, and the Boredoms.
Still, the majority of Dominique Leone is sunny pop, and as such suffers a bit from over-consistency. The brightness can become a blinding glare-- skip randomly around the album and it's hard to remember which tune is which. But if the cost of hearing Leone hone his fertile musical approach is a little tedium, that's a fair price to pay. Especially when the reward is the album-ending "Conversational", an aching Beatles-esque ballad that serves as an open-ended farewell on a record worth staying in touch with.
