A lot has changed since Digitalism debuted with Idealism in 2007. France's Justice and their blog-house followers took peak-hour rave rock to its breaking point and left it limping by the side of the road. Electronic dance music cycled back through more traditional and frequently more mellow strains of disco and house. And everyone more or less stopped talking about once hopelessly hot labels like Ed Banger and Kitsuné.
All of which actually leaves the Hamburg duo poised for a big second act. Idealism showed clear pop aspirations, from the Cure-repurposing of "Digitalism in Cairo" to the streamlined vocal number "Pogo". With thumping house beats still a big pop presence, now might be as good a time as any to realize such a crossover. But I Love You, Dude doesn't shake off the confines of genre to reveal a shiny new pop act underneath. Nor does it meaningfully improve on Digitalism's previous formulas.
Instead, Dude is a mere rehash, as its title's similarity to 2009 Paul Rudd-Jason Segel bromance I Love You, Man, would suggest. Lead single "Blitz", with its filtered, circling synth lead, effectively recreates some of the glitzy appeal of Idealism's "Zdarlight", but with no moment quite as catchy as that song's effervescent guitar break. "Antibiotics" sort of recalls Tiga's Soulwax collab "What You Need", with its pitched-down exhortations giving way to jabbing drum machines and distorted synth. Neither track is more essential than its predecessors.
The songs that go for the pop jugular don't have much better luck. "2 Hearts", with its eighth-note keyboard builds and buzzing, sidelong synth stabs, comes off like a pale echo of Phoenix's "1901". The album's collaboration with the Strokes' Julian Casablancas is a slight improvement, its chorus rising almost gracefully out of its dull lumbering verses. But if naming your album I Love You, Dude is perhaps guileless, then what would you call having Casablancas sing the chorus ("And so you run," he yelps) and then calling the track "Forrest Gump" (because, you know, Forrest ran)?
The rest of the album is one undistinguished track after another of grinding, growling synths and digitally clipped drum machines, from the impotent fanfare of "Stratosphere" to to the distorted plod of "Miami Showdown". There's a reason that, a single here or there aside, the Hype Machine hive mind collectively burned out on blog-house, and it's that all the super-compressed synth noise just gets to be physically exhausting to take in after a while, whether over the course of a club night or a long-playing album.
