Let’s play Man Without Machines bingo.
Dundee! Debut Album! 80′s influenced synth pop! That’s enough to put some people off their soggy cornflakes. But hold your horses.
“We’re ignoring UK’s best music, says Steve Lamacq” – and you know what? He’s right. So if you can put aside your preconceptions for a minute, there’s a ridiculously GREAT record waiting to be discovered. It’s called The Kreuzberg Press.
As other writers have correctly pointed out, Scottish indie music lends itself to a “perpetual propensity for dour misery“. It’s not exactly the right climate for Will Smith to emerge and get jiggy with it. God forbid.
Man Without Machines are not asking anyone to get jiggy. On the subject of synth-influenced bands you can bust a move to, I enjoy a Pet Shop Boys track as much as any right thinking person does but it’s not that which I see as the main attraction.
In fact, for me the entire album is all about balance. Whoever mixed The Kreuzberg Press did a fantastic job getting it, as Goldilocks would say, just right.
Listening to an album will suggest different things to different people. Sure, I hear the synth influences that most reviews namecheck but in my mind I can conjure up all sorts of others – rightly or wrongly.
The Wedding Present and Guided By Voices spring to mind immediately. Sprinkle in the odd R.E.M. harmony vocal and New Order-esque chord progressions and suddenly you realise that what you are listening to is, in fact, rather brilliant.
It may dance between 80s indie rock, synth-pop and the like but there are a few keyboard sections that wouldn’t sound out of place on the latest Future of the Left record. This ain’t 90s power pop. It’s a lot smarter than that without sounding like it’s trying at all.
Effortlessly gliding into each track with a Summer festival feel that could pull off the rare feat of not being out of place on daytime Radio 1 as well as the hipster evening shows.
Anyone can listen to it on Spotify. That’s why you should hunt down a physical copy and hold it close.
The memories you associate with these songs could last a lifetime.
You could make Summer of 2013 full of them. And if you wanna get jiggy I’m sure no-one will judge you. Honest.
