Cashmere Cat's 2012 EP Mirror Maru meant big things for producer Magnus August Høiberg—it's just that one of those big things was the opportunity to be yet another argument starter regarding what bass music/pop/R&B crossover is actually supposed to accomplish. The star track seems clear enough: remix headliner stars like Lana Del Rey and 2 Chainz, get in the good graces/setlist rotation of Hudson Mohawke and Diplo, cop one of those coveted Grand Theft Auto soundtrack slots, and let the buzz build with the same simmering groundswell that his beats possess. His remixes were fine recontextualizations, supplanting the faster/bigger/now structure of the originals' don't-touch-that-dial immediacy with more pillowy melodies and gentler crests. (And sometimes vice-versa.) Once his handiness with the soft-touch approach to bass music became apparent on Mirror Maru, the inevitable questions followed: is he supposed to be the antidote to pop's love affair with post-rave maximalism? A trendy yet point-missing interloper in R&B's space-soul continuum? Just another in a long line of young artists who's going to have to figure out how to evolve in a spotlight?
All that might reveal itself in time, but meanwhile there's another EP to take in. And Wedding Bells ramps up the twinkly, diaphanous, twee little elements in his arsenal—assuming things like fluttery harp glissandos and shivering-puppy vibes can actually be ramped up instead of, I don't know, squeezed out, like some sparkly novelty toothpaste for kids. The sparse, wistful pianos and juddering, mechanically-jointed percussive elements of Mirror Maru were never all that rough-edged or aggro, but the blissed-out vibes have lapsed into a sighing, glassy-eyed stupor with all signs of intensity held back or just outright muted. Too often the beat plinks instead of thumps, and in the moments where it's given free reign to burst out and get things moving it's countered by synthesized permutations of pan pipes (“Wedding Bells”) or toy pianos (“Pearls”). Dance music doesn't need to be a bow-throwing, sweat-flinging mosh-pit soundtrack, but it's hard to overcome the dissonance between heavy bass and fragile melody, even when it's worth trying. Would things be any better if Owl City copped his style off Girl Unit instead of the Postal Service? Does that question even need answering?
Fortunately, there's still a fundamental groove backing up Cashmere Cat's stop-start dynamics and his wiseass tendency to turn bass drops into safe parachute landings. His percussive sounds—supple and rattling like drumlines, unafraid to let kicks run free—keep Wedding Bells engaging at those times when it's not merely distracting. And there are still stretches of head-tilting weirdness. The borderline non-verbal vocals in “With Me” and “Rice Rain” are manipulated into quavering swoops of synthesized, inhuman unreality to eerie effect. And when those robot-pixie chirps in that latter track are backed up with a healthy dose of bass/snare/clap buildups and breakdowns, that pushes it into surreally giddy turf. Its ultimate destiny seems to be the soundtrack for an Adventure Time dance party.
But aside from its appropriate feel for a good time get-down in a surprisingly cheerful cartoon post-apocalypse, it's hard to get any real emotional connection from these cuts. Balancing precious, twee cheerfulness and dancefloor-blowout impact is tricky enough when the 4/4 bears down on you constantly. When it slips in and out of rhythmic phase, building up to crests that aren't much higher than the valleys, it has all the disorienting chaos of the most pro forma Skrillexian drop without its chemical-floodgate jolt. So the melodies, whether legitimately stirring or just “pretty” in scare quotes, cause more agitation than elation. If this is the sound of an artist's early phase breaking itself apart, Cashmere Cat definitely has it in him to build the debris back into something deeper and weirder.
