Plenty of bands falter when their ambition outstrips their ability, but for Baltimore's EAR PWR, the problem is exactly the opposite. It's hard to get mad at the fun, shallow Super Animal Brothers III, unless you're the sort of person who's infuriated by neon sunglasses and haphazard leotard combinations on principle, in which case, prepare to get heated. It feels like they'd do better if they dropped the postures and affectations that dilute the album and instead focused on fleshing out their songs, which are sown with the seeds of good ideas.
From the first sounds you hear-- a pestering alarm and a soupy, panning bass tone-- you know what sort of album it's going to be: puffy-paint party jams à la Dan Deacon, with lots of pixilated analog synth streams, glitchy drum matrices, and faux-kiddy singing about video games, sparkly sweaters, and, I don't know, manatees? You get the impression you aren't really supposed to pay attention to the lyrics. But where Deacon infuses his day-glo riots with brainy intent, EAR PWR recycle the worst tendencies of electroclash: the lackluster rapping and willful inanity. It's frustrating because there's ample evidence that EAR PWR aren't compensating for being shitty at music, they're just dumbing down.
Devin Booze studied in UNC-Asheville's music technology program (founded by Bob Moog), where he learned to build the devices used in EAR PWR's music, and he's quite clever at fitting deranged textures around locomotive rhythms. His sequences are lively, squiggling like chiptune, sashaying like Italo-disco, and singing out like new wave. He makes a synthesizer whiz around like a punctured helium balloon on "Diamonds Liquor Leather", fashions a kind of demented Irish reel on "Secret Stars", and employs glockenspiels and deformed Boyz II Men samples on "Boys II Volcanoes". He likes to cut off his loops at the ankles to create a feeling of choppy, precarious progression rather than fluidity, and this air of haste evokes the album as a whole-- a handful of cool loops welded together doesn't automatically make a memorable song.
Similarly, Sarah Reynolds can sing a nice hook when she cares to. The choruses of "Future Eyes" and the title track are earworms; Reynolds could do more with this Belinda Carlisle-meets-M.I.A. shtick. But it's never very long before she's back to stringing together nursery chants, snatches of unmoored melody, general sassy noises, and rudimentary rapping, and the songs dissolve into a mush of mannerisms. Honestly, the deck is stacked against EAR PWR as a recording entity-- their music, focusing on thrill-per-second immediacy and communal ecstasy, is designed for warehouse parties full of sympathetic friends who find your bad rapping cute. Here, they could take a lesson from Deacon: Live, let the id rage, but let your brain do the heavy-lifting when it comes time to make something for those who couldn't make it to the party.
