Live, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. perform in logo-emblazoned NASCAR regalia. Couple this fact with their moniker and the title of their debut LP, It's a Corporate World, and you might peg them as some sort of subversive, Adbusters-influenced project. But Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. are a sweet, fairly unassuming electro-tinged indie pop band; nothing less, but precious little more. The name, the costumes, and the anti-corporate rumblings all but melt away once you hit play on It's a Corporate World. Bands these days need a hook to stand out from the pack, I realize. If only a few more of those hooks had made it onto the record.
Joshua Epstein and Daniel Zott's collaboration began with a mutual interest in production work, and indeed, Corporate World is both unerringly orderly and rife with background flourishes. Even at their least remarkable, their melodies get by on good-natured exuberance, and the headphone-friendly tarting-up they're given proves time and again the band's best maneuver. Both Epstein and Zott have the sort of warm, softish indie-dude voices that carry their tunes without stepping out in front of them. Nearly everything about the record's so agreeable, so well-engineered and aerodynamic, it just glides.
Corporate World leans gently into its melodic curves, leaving most of the twisting and turning to the production. Their debut EP, Horse Power, concluded with a note-perfect cover of the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows", more an airtight, Pomplamoose-style layering exercise than a reimagination of that familiar tune. Much of Corporate World feels similarly stacked, although left to their own melodic devices, these dudes aren't exactly Brian Wilson. More often than not, they smartly doll up these straightforward tunes in chirpy harmonies and electroid gurgles, coloring in the clean lines of their melodies. Highlight "Nothing But Our Love" gets along on a chipper enough melody, but its the subtly twittering guitar doodle and head-nod clatter of its beat that actually do the head-sticking. Same with "Vocal Chords", a pleasant enough tune boosted by a Tina Weymouth-style bass bump and flittery guitar.
But the sonic dazzle outshines the melodies at the heart of many of these tracks. It's not the main vocal line of "Skeletons" you'll take with you into the next track, but the croon swimming through its background; even lilting opener "Morning Thought," one of the set's stronger numbers, seems outmatched by its shimmering keyboards and shuffling rhythm. And when they throw too much on the track, as on the murky "The Fisherman" or the snarling, somewhat out-of-place "When I Open My Eyes", the record's easygoing pace halts. Sonically rich but melodically staid, Corporate World ultimately brings to mind Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.'s extramusical affairs: alluring at first, but a bit wanting under the surface.
