There's room for both innovators and curators in indie rock, and if you appreciate the latter, perhaps you've found time for Blonde Redhead over the past two decades. Not all of us could be there to experience No Wave, SST-era Sonic Youth, or My Bloody Valentine as actual recording artists firsthand, but as Blonde Redhead stated on their 1997 album, Fake Can Be Just As Good. The group has always strived to be a gateway to cool and, as such, would probably take it as a compliment to suggest they never sounded like they could've been from anywhere other than New York.
That comes to an end on Penny Sparkle, an album whose quest to evoke a more comfortable point in our collective lives almost qualifies it as chillwave. Yet it's not the sound of "the beach" or "youth" that Penny Sparkle embodies, but rather our last economic boom period, a time that inspired countless chill-out compilations and dubious record deals from labels who swear they found their more radio-friendly Portishead. If you happen to be a music coordinator for Banana Republic, Penny Sparkle is an early Christmas gift. For everyone else, you're left to wonder whether 2010 will produce a more profoundly boring album from a band who actually had a reputation to uphold.
This shift doesn't come wholly unexpectedly-- songs like "The Dress", "My Impure Hair", and "Heroine" leaned toward pillowy electro-balladry, but they served as important contrast between the Loveless worship. Here, it's the only side of the story being told, and it's being told with the kind of BPMs that could knock out a speed addict. This kind of stuff is derisively called background music, and rightfully so, since every member of Blonde Redhead here sounds afraid to step forward. Singer Kazu Makino is almost exclusively merely casting shadows over everything, and transitions from verses to choruses are merely implied. This is not the kind of stuff you need to hire Alan Moulder to mix for you.
Outside of a distorted vocal on "Not Getting There" and a slowly blooming and surprisingly gripping waltz ("Everything Is Wrong"), the arrangements seem done up like hospital rooms, every sound picked for maximum sterility. If you're in a forgiving mood, you can liken it to a chloroformed late-90s Depeche Mode or an honestly failed attempt at the frosted sensuality of Vespertine. If you're in a realistic mood, you'll hear Amedeo Pace carelessly whispering through the soft-focus reggae of "Will There Be Stars" and imagine Roxy Music stuck on a Carnival cruise.
Penny Sparkle could be approached from a cynical perspective, an admission that after 15 years, Blonde Redhead have realized they'll never be called "like Loveless, but better," and have decided to work in a field that isn't exactly brimming with luminaries. But there's a right way (see: School of Seven Bells' Disconnect From Desire) and a wrong way (see: the nearly identical shift of Asobi Seksu's Hush) to reconcile your shoegaze past with downtempo, pre-2k electronic pop: and a big part of the trick is that if you're going to drop the big, whooshy guitars, it helps to remember it was the vigorous Ray of Light that went multi-platinum, not Morcheeba.
