Prior to forming electro-pop outfit Class Actress, frontwoman Elizabeth Harper made a go of it as an acoustic folk artist. I've heard a bit of Harper's solo output, and while it's quite pretty and a fine showcase for her swooping, evocative voice, the equally moody but more dance-friendly Class Actress suggests trading the coffeehouse for the nightclub was an excellent decision.
Class Actress' initial release, the Journal of Ardency EP, couldn't be more resolutely 1980s-vintage if it'd been put out on cassette tape. Sonically, the group freely appropriates the sullen synthetics of New Order, the Human League, and Depeche Mode. But where Ladyhawke or Telepathe's Melissa Livaudais match coolly detached, affectless vocals to those artificial tones, Harper offers a playful, breathy coo that hearkens back to hipster queens like Blondie's Debbie Harry and Saint Etienne's Sarah Cracknell.
"Careful What You Say" opens the EP, and from its initial noisy synth blurts you'd be forgiven for thinking we were entering Crystal Castles territory. Soon enough, however, Harper shows up to assure us that we're actually in for chic pop froth. Insouciant as her pipes may be, Harper's lyrics are more interesting and cutting than your typical indie-dance fare, perhaps a byproduct of her aforementioned former life as a folkie, where words have nowhere to hide. "You've woken the guards," Harper chides, lending romantic discord the tension of a heist film.
The title track also throws a curveball-- creepy, Knife-ish synths that lead into a rubbery groove and sighing melody. The real leftfield treat, however, is the third track, "Let Me Take You Out", which proves the group's record collection doesn't consist solely of synth-pop-- apparently they expanded their horizons to include mopey 80s guitar music, too, particularly the Cure and the Smiths. "Let Me Take You Out" not only evokes lyrics from "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" in its title, but Harper also mimics Morrissey's haunting vocal swoons, while the music conjures up the best giddy guitar-pop rushes of Robert Smith's bunch.
Journal of Ardency's final two tracks prove the EP's title accurate. Harper demonstrates a facility for empathizing with outsized teenage lovesickness in "Adolescent Heart" and then shows why with "Someone Real", which finds her admitting, "I truly obsess over every word you say," before begging a prospective lover to "believe me when I tell you that you need someone real." Were Harper setting her pleas for shared emotional transparency against a softly strummed guitar, it all might be a bit too real, but atop stark beats and malfunctioning synth twinkles that sound like kissing cousins to Junior Boys' "Under the Sun", her passion proves to be the same kind of compelling counterweight to frosty sonics that helped make the music of her influences so memorable.
