Review
Matinee Club
The Modern

Synthpop is a funny thing. Most genres to spring out of the electronic explosion of the 1980's are founded on a firm platform of moving forward. Unlike more traditional rock instrumentation, the equipment available to the electronic musician is constantly evolving into new forms, both hardware and software. And if you don't keep up (or purposefully regress to banging kitchen utensils together and feeding the resultant noise through a Gameboy to produce the maximum kitsch value) you are left behind terribly quickly to eke out a meager existence in the So Last Year ghetto, where one-hit wonders wail and gnash their teeth before being rounded up by the Warp Records death squads.

Bearing that in mind, synthpop stands aside from the herd in that it is almost purposely retro. While equipment has changed and dance music mutated into a thousand different sub-genres of beardy electronica, a simple correlation of beats, synths and maybe a few guitar washes can only stray so far from the blueprint laid down by the likes of Duran Duran, Erasure, and Depeche Mode.

Matinee Club (until quite recently known as The Modern, from which this LP takes its name) certainly don't take the chance to drive synthpop into new and unknown pastures, but what they do with a great deal of talent and panache is carve out layered, tight little pop gems. I say pop in the purest sense of the word. This record is unashamedly commercial dancefloor fodder, and even the most hardcore Slayer fan would have difficulty not singing along to the likes of "Jane Falls Down" by the time the second chorus kicks in.

While this record goes for the less-is-more approach eight songs, plus a wedge of remixes tacked onto the end I suspect that the reason for doing so is that quite a few of the tracks on here have been lifted off previous releases as The Modern. It's a release that has been designed to push the band in the States, and since every track on this could be released as a single for maximum dancefloor impact, that's no bad thing.

The variation in sound on the LP is quite impressive, albeit a probable side effect of having both a male and a female vocalist. The driving feel-good "Questions" stands alongside more beat-heavy tunes like "Industry" and the Dave Gahan-quality croonalong "Suburban Culture", yet the approach never feels slapdash. Hell, even the remixes are mostly worth listening to with a particularly cool and crunchy re-imagining of the track "Sometimes" performed by Lawgiverz.

The main criticism of Matinee Club is that, frankly, does anyone care about synthpop anymore? When even goths have become tired of a sub-genre you know the writing is on the wall. That's a petty point though, and if anything the only thing hindering this band may be an excess of melody and dancefloor-friendly rhythms. If they're wanting to break out into the wider world of indie, skinny trousered scenedom (as Ladytron successfully achieved in the past couple of years) they may have to veer towards the more opaque electro favored in the current climate.

I hope they don't though, because if inoffensively twinkling slices of synthpop sponge cake are your thing, this LP is the most promising debut release in years.