Review: Marsheaux – Lumineux Noir

Reviewing a Marsheaux album is much like reviewing a blade of grass: beautiful in its way but identical to thousands of other blades nearby. And nothing to distinguish it from the rest, nothing to leave behind that would cause to remember and treasure that particular blade.

That said, there is an odd complexity to reviewing Marsheaux’s latest, in fact it has taken over a month to craft a short review as one struggles to come up with anything meaningful to say about inherently non-meaningful music and in the meantime finding the album really growing on your humble blogger.

This Greek electro-pop duo keeps it very, very old-school, as they have on their previous releases, Peek-a-Boo and E-Bay Queen, and they certainly get it right in terms of mood and overall sound. What they are missing – and what they missed on the previous efforts – is the energy needed to make some of these tracks pop, and make a lasting impression.

Is the CD “dead”? Thom Yorke the latest to pile on

The latest in the debate over music formats comes from Radiohead’s Thom Yorke who opines that it’s not just the physical format that is dying on the vine but the very idea of making “albums” (read: album-length music projects vs. one-offs).

This isn’t new, musicphiles the world over have been debating this point ad nauseum, but Yorke seems to be taking that baby step further. It makes us wonder, does the change in format not only signal the end of the CD (in a word, yes – for myriad reasons) but the end of the idea of a long player, full stop? (don’t know, hope not). The ramifications are huge – liner notes, cover art, thematic linkages between collections of songs – all would be gone in an “albumless world”. And that would suck.

Book of Love reunion gig

Book of Love, the subject of our first “Bands We Miss” post will be reuniting for an evening. Main songwriter Ted Ottaviano just sent us a note announcing a party to celebrate the 25th anniversary (!!) of the release of their self-titled debut at the Highline Ballroom in New York September 27. Most excitingly the band will be performing at the gig – a performance Softsynth would kill to see and may just have to make the trip. As we’ve written before, Softsynth misses this band above most others and it’s sure nice to see this important date thus remembered…

Goldfrapp blogs

In case you weren’t aware, Alison Goldfrapp has been blogging pretty extensively and Softsynth has been following closely trying to get a sense of what direction the forthcoming album will take. She recently updated an interesting aside:
“…we had a productive week and i think its safe to say this album is gonna be a lot more up than the last, reckon its gonna be really fun to play this one live.”

We were not fans of the last Goldfrapp album. We have written about this extensively, especially on the heels of Supernature, one of Softsynth’s all-time favourite albums in the history of everything, so this tidbit is most exciting and puts a metaphoric smile on our face. 

She’s a conscientious and consistent blogger. Worth following, especially if you are interested in tracking the progress of the new “Goldfrapp, mach 5″…