Not hiding behind Friendly Fires anymore…
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[6.29]
John Seroff: I’m a big fan of the church as disco and vice versa, especially when you keep the sanctity and choir of either space whole. “We Can’t Fly” does this well; it’s grandiose in ambition and scope but precisely true with its aim, producing a vast-winged Larry Levan-headed sphinx, soaring on wings of Atari-striped neon color. It is immense and personal and very very good.
[9]
Martin Skidmore: Belgian dance music with a reggae beat and some glittering, pulsing synths giving it a very bright and sunshiney feel, though parts of it sounds very like the Ibiza of some years ago. The almost gospel choir vocals are appealing, and though parts of it seemed to have too little going on, as if unfinished, I enjoyed it.
[6]
Alex Macpherson: Extended gestations for long-awaited albums are rarely a good sign. Aeroplane captured the dance zeitgeist in 2008-09 with a sequence of wonderful remixes, displaying a knack for hitting the hedonic hot spots that elevated them above many of their Balearic peers. That was an aeon ago, in fickle dance terms; and though the declining standard of the mixes and remixes could be attributed to their focus on their debut album proper, the slightly lacklustre “We Can’t Fly” evinces a degree of trepidation about the entire project — compounded by the news that the Aeroplane duo is now a solo act. “We Can’t Fly” isn’t poor, exactly, but it seems rote, a cheap imitation of the Aeroplane aesthetic: the piano is too loud, the chorales too lazy, the cheap-sounding synth that ruptures the track a third of the way through rather ill-advised. It feels like a lot of effort put in to retain what once came so naturally.
[5]
Mark Sinker: Theme and variations; like walking thru a house where every room is airlessly interior-decorated in its own unrelated super-clinical style. You couldn’t possibly live there, and you’re not meant to. It’s a showhouse: “Hire me and I’ll pep up your actual song however you like! Look at my amazing range!”
[3]
Chuck Eddy: Youtube comments suggest this is meant to be a “tribute to disco.” I suppose I can hear that — there are hints of, say, Sylvester’s high-flying church notes, plus those boogie woogying early house pianos and operatic voices and so on — though I’m honestly not sure I would have picked up on the concept on my own. And I’m somebody who still listens to a lot of disco. I guess if it actually sounded like disco, it’d be mere nostalgia? I understand that, in theory. But as is, what I’m mainly detecting is the quote marks.
[7]
Alfred Soto: Jittery, clackety, crunchy — this track deserves assonance commensurate with its sound.
[9]
Jonathan Bogart: It’s too early for the Lemon Jelly revival.
[5]