2 many years away?
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[5.29]
Alfred Soto: Released a dozen years ago, this compendium of bass synth and squeals and diffident vocals might have impressed Holy Ghost! Turns out it’s been that long since Soulwax released an album.
[5]
Tim de Reuse: Soulwax’s dramatic return to the album format after 12 years of gargantuan, back-to-back live shows and the compilation of a 24-hour mashup megamix is strangely restrained; on this bouncy lead single they explicitly refuse to let anything really happen. They show off some very expensive-sounding analogue synths and a few nice grooves and then politely step out of the room in observation of some unspoken tenet of Belgian dance-rock purity. It all sounds positively delicious — these guys are still some of the best-sounding producers out there — and I have to respect their refusal to really build into anything grandiose, but there’s a whole lot more garnish than there is meat. Also unfortunate: since their last batch of original music their lyrics haven’t gotten any less stilted, and the rhyme between “truth” and “truce” walks a very fine line between charmingly obtuse and just plain ugly.
[7]
Edward Okulicz: Soulwax once wrote really good pop songs, now they just dance around them. As a band they’re still stuck between their guitars and their turntables and not quite able to pick a side and commit, and as such, the major flaw of their last album, Any Minute Now, is repeated here. Lots of cool noises, but I miss those big catchy choruses enlivened by Stephen Dewaele’s sour delivery; this is formless and sprawling which works well in a dance track, but they don’t play it as a dance track, it’s like an empty rock song that doesn’t quite work. Bet the remixes are good though, because I would definitely listen to a Nite Versions version of this.
[5]
Micha Cavaseno: The myth of “dance/indie” is one of the strangest persisting ones in music. This alternate world that once overwhelmed reality: a place where losers did the awkward pilgrim 2-step in shitty loft parties across the world to unfunky tunes so persistently obsessed with their funkiness that were best suited for Premium Channel TV Series scores. Soulwax, creators of the only unlistenable early Klaxons remix, are one of those acts who were stalwarts of that era and as per usual this shit is boring me to tears and has not advanced because they’re a group who are stunted. They do not acknowledge what’s really going on in dance, nor do they work on developing any of their (supposed) unique characteristics. No, they’re just gonna stick with the same cowardice they and their peers all reek of.
[4]
Will Rivitz: Soulwax’s style of industrial electro-rock, at best, uses its mechanization and quantization to sound alive, machines getting down in such an odd and jarring way that they approximate the oddness and jarringness of actual dancing. This song is robotic and steely, but it’s so straightforwardly artificial that there’s little by way of life. It’s the sound of a factory running smoothly, not one going haywire — and Soulwax needs that chaos.
[5]
Ryo Miyauchi: “The world’s a mess, so I’m gonna create something new to better it!” has been a conceit better explored in a span of an album than the compact length of a pop single for Soulwax, and it’s true here: the patience in the bass lines of “Missing Wires” works more as an anchoring motif few songs down the line. Though, the difference here is that Soulwax in the past was nowhere this careful — a blessing in disguise that has made for some of the best moments during one trashy decade. And with so much care to their next steps, they make it sound like a chore to create music.
[4]
Iain Mew: The most I’ve ever enjoyed a record while being predominately occupied by its stereo seperation.
[7]