In the mounting global effort to Make the Indie Kids Dance, no one's stopped to ask the question: Why would you want to watch an indie kid dance? You'll just make them feel self-conscious and awkward, which is sort of how you feel listening to Mixel Pixel's third album. On Music for Plants, the kaleidoscopic Brooklyn popsters continue the digitization process that began on last year's Contact Kid, but wind up with an indie/electro compromise that's too busy for stoned-in-the-basement contemplation, but too sluggish to coax you onto the dancefloor.
The problem isn't that Mixel Pixel are playing with incongruent tech/psych elements-- of all forms of rock music, psychedelia is most compatible with dance music's exploratory and transcendental intents-- but that the songs too often favor density over intensity. Their productions are rich in details but languorous in execution; the band seem particularly fond of the sitar-tinged shuffle grooves and Atari bleeps that Beck deployed to more charismatic effect during his Dust Brothers days, but rarely seem motivated to break out of their metronomic gait or beef up the beats beyond a Casiotone click. Even their most flagrant discotheque maneuver, "Coming Up X's", comes off as Ladytron-lite, hamstrung by a clunky chorus guitar riff that dulls the song's synth-pop sheen.
It's hard to tell whether Music for Plant's slackadasical air is exaggerated by Rob Corradetti's arch, deadpan delivery or vice versa; while his faux-Brit sing-speak is an ideal fit for the icy Teutonic disco of "Turkish Delights", it sounds considerably more stilted when attempting straight-faced come-ons like "hey baby, do you like the way I dance" (on "Switchblade Sister"). And though Kaia Wong provides sweet relief when trading lines on "You're the Kind of Girl" and "Behind the Sun" (the only track here to threaten the 180bpm mark), her voice doesn't really complement Corradetti's on their shared parts: the two don't so much harmonize as sing over top one another, making the mixes feel even more cluttered. So it follows that the album's most satisfying moment comes when their voices drop out on "Switchblade Sister" for an extended synth-freaked outro that constitutes a rare moment where Mixel Pixel tweak the mind and body with equal authority. Because as much as Corradetti and Wong try to convince you that "there's a party going on," for the most part that invite carries all the hollow promise of a doorman forcing patrons to line-up for an empty nightclub.
