Looking back, the Rapture's legacy is as a galvanizing force for the underground, busting indie rock's standstill so mightily that we're now embarrassed to be the guy not dancing. They never seemed like a good bet to break dance music to the mainstream audiences, though, no matter how hard iTunes insists that the closing track on my copy of 2006's Pieces of the People We Love is titled "Best Buy Exclusive." Pan-pop conspiracy theorists might note that the Rapture reached fever-pitch in New York in 2003, or right around the time that Lady Gaga was enrolling at NYU, but if the Rapture hadn't stopped their own momentum, someone would have stopped it for them: likely labelmate/mentor/producer James Murphy, whose LCD Soundsystem offered the same funk-punk grooves but had better jokes (well, had jokes period) and a more explosive live presence, with pathos to boot. The Rapture were too nervy and out-of-sync to ascend the ranks.
None of that changes the fact that the Rapture return, minus a surly Youtube non-sensation, at a time when house and disco are more fashionable than at any time since the early 1980s. See Gaga, see Hercules and Love Affair, see couture Daft Punk Lego dolls, see the fact that Chris Brown knows a French guy. The Rapture, always medium opportunists, aren't interested in taking advantage of this. They've become what they've always threatened to become: an art-rock band with predilections for boogie and dippy lyrics. Grace sounds like the Rapture without retreading past successes, a nifty trick that underscores the band's hard-won identity.
The Rapture are a pretty good art-rock band, too: Grace is fleshier than its predecessors, with horns, needlework guitar, and Jenner's brash voice filling the negative space the band used to gift to the dance floor. They deftly respond to choral background vocals, funky synth slabs, and tasteful guitar fills. A group that was once a combustible ball of energy is now a functioning nervous system with a keen sense of pace and texture. You can hear notes of U2's propulsive anthems ("Sail Away"), Talking Heads' agitated funk ("Can You Find a Way"), and XTC's ballast pop ("Rollercoaster"). You can forgive them for envying Cut Copy's hot-knife-through-butter crowd uniters ("Children").
Grace is the band's mature album, by their own reckoning: Press for the record has almost unanimously focused on the members' stroller-pushing benders, how frontman Luke Jenner spent time playing softball, attending church, and coping with the loss of his mother. Stability and love dominate its themes, the title cutting think-pieces off at the pass by invoking grace directly: This album is about sustained, earned love, as well as the forgiveness inherent in it.
When it clicks, it's triumphant. My two favorite songs are two of the most explicitly groove-oriented, ramped to tempos at which Jenner's alkaline voice can't help but cast hooks. "Miss You" attempts to reconcile with his mother, while "Never Die Again" pleads for a healthy relationship, topics flung far from dance music's typical fare. Of course, if the songs were about Lunchables or macroeconomics, I'd love them just them same; such is the draw when Jenner turns his nasal pipes to siren.
Therein lies the fallacy of the Rapture's maturity: Jenner has always played peek-a-boo with God and serenity (previous albums included songs titled "Love Is All", "Live in the Sunshine", and "Open Up Your Heart", not forgetting that the name of the band is the Rapture). On Grace he does so with more explicit inspiration, but he's a fumbling lyricist, better suited for tunneling into our Nikes than our hearts.
Jenner used to scrap and cluck for our attention more often; he's had better luck wrangling sentiment out of a yelp than a platitude (the best disco singers handle both). His finest moment is on lead single "How Deep Is Your Love?", the galloping, piano-driven tour de force that so many Chicago house revivalists have failed to nail. Here, the rollicking pianos match his devotional pitch, the wilding sax echoing his hallelujahs. Still, Jenner can feel like a man without a country. He doesn't have the pipes for the sustained howling of "Sail Away", "Blue Bird", or the title track (a misplaced, tedious centerpiece). Nor does the sentiment of soul-sided closer "It Takes Time to Be a Man" lend itself to his tonal irreverence and pizzazz. Of all the naughties indie giants thinking hard about domesticity (LCD, Animal Collective, the National), the Rapture's medium is least primed for the message.
This isn't the Rapture's fault, necessarily. "House of Jealous Lovers" is such a totem amid the last decade of indie that it's easy to forget they began as a somewhat (no pun) catholic punk band. In the Grace of Your Love takes two large steps back from "dance punk." Nearly a decade after "Jealous Lovers", they're a patient, skilled rock band unafraid to look uncool. If they sound extra comfy here it's probably because discomfort pervaded their best work so completely. The band's personal choices-- to abandon rock iconography for smaller, more fulfilling family units-- will be Grace's fate as well: a record without broader narratives, meant for those who grew up with the Rapture, or want to.
