Unless you're a hack laptop DJ who spends too much time trolling Hype Machine for hot new remixes, you may not be familiar with French production duo the Shoes. For the past couple of years, they've been toiling in that creative substrata of the electronic music world which means turning out big, buzzy remixes for indie popsters like Ladyhawke and Late of the Pier and occasionally getting a stab at flipping a song as massive as Wiley's bottle-popping, grime-gone-clubbing UK hit "Wearing My Rolex". No shame in that. Everyone has to start somewhere, and if Guillaume Brière and Benjamin Lebeau's aren't yet household names, their background has at least prepared them well for making their own surprisingly pop-oriented debut.
Shoes have recruited ringers including prolific all-purpose collaborator Gonzales and high-profile pop producer Lexxx (Arcade Fire, Crystal Castles, Madonna), as well as lesser-known names like Esser, CocknBullKid, and the Bewitched Hands to help out on everything from keys, vocals, and percussion to mixing and production duties. It would be surprising for these tracks not to come out sounding like well-polished pop, and indeed, they land nicely somewhere below the breezy highs of fellow Frenchmen Phoenix but above the well-groomed banality of, say, Tahiti 80.
About half the album aims for pathos at the disco, the kind of contrast of melancholy emotion and moving rhythms that have allowed rock bands to infiltrate dance clubs without mussing their pouts since at least the dawn of New Order. "Stay the Same" cops the glum night out vibe of early Hot Chip on the verses and the drugged choirboy falsetto of the Klaxons on the chorus. The title track has its vocalist sighing, "There's nobody in the club/ I am the only one who's dancing" over weeping synthetic strings, a listlessly robotic hand-clap, and an appropriately spacious amount of reverb. "Wastin' Time" is an effectively encouraging lift-your-head-up sort of ballad, backed with stick clicking percussion and soft cushioning synthesizer chords, its icy background vocals and keys recalling similar producers-turned-band Miike Snow.
But Shoes are at their best when they shake such ennui off. Of their more upbeat numbers, "People Movin" might have the most effective hook, an understatedly soulful revolving door chorus ("People movin' out/ People movin' in/ Why?") set to a preset Rhythm Ace "Latin" beat augmented with live drums and a mopey flute motif. Also outstanding is "Cliché", on which an arresting female vocal stutter opens up into synth squeals and airy diva vocals on the choruses.
These songs can sometimes feel like catchy choruses surrounded by almost superfluous verses-- in other words, great remix material-- and the album closes with a track that demonstrates how well these songs might work as extended versions with sparser vocal elements, the nearly nine-minute long "Investigator". Crack My Bones can feel a little more anonymously cobbled together than you'd like from a pop group's debut, but it's still a promising and occasionally excellent first step for Shoes out from behind the studio desk and into the spotlight.
