For those dismayed by Capitol K's move toward traditional live-band instrumentation on previous album Happy Happy, Kristian Robinson has returned to the sounds and themes of breakthrough LP Island Row and pushed up the dance quotient even further. With titles like "Hong Kong", "Tapei", and "Pan Continental", Nomad Junk is a electronic pastiche of traveling and cultural tourism. Fittingly then, opener "Jamboree" feels like a slow ride on a moving walkway into a glamourous foreign airport. Robinson wraps a few thin notes of guitar around a cracking drum loop, the atmosphere thick like humid air, and a climbing acoustic guitar figure unfolds over it all with Zeppelin-esque grace. "Hong Kong" breaks a bouzouki riff to pieces over stiff, unforgiving drums and Robinson's sound effect library: shooting lasers, ringing telephones, and far-off flute whistles.
The pan-global restlessness is underlined by "Can't Lie Down". One of Nomad Junk's few non-instrumental tracks, Robinson takes a fanciful vocal turn over single strums of guitar and happily bubbling synth tones. Playfully speak-singing on one line, mumbling on the next, it aptly turns distraction and noncomittance into playful pop. Heavy vocoder on the brooding "Taipei" pushes the album further onto the dancefloor.
Momentum is lost in the second half, and the mariachi guitars in "Pan-continental" are a bit too obvious signifiers for the title's suggestion. While the album is well-paced and transitions smoothly from track-to-track, it all sounds somewhat dated. I assumed that came with the return-to-form territory, and Capitol K had to risk irrelevance to return to his roots (or at least his best material). But no; breaking out Island Row again, it still sounds fresh, tearing apart rhythms and slathering distortion on fearlessly. It's Nomad Junk that plays it safe. It treads the same territory as Island Row, but even its best tracks are a tourist's surface glance instead of a new insight.
