Doublespeak

A new electronic supergroup is born. The legend that is Vince Clarke has teamed up with Neil Arthur – singer of Blancmange – and music producer Benge. The result is a cover album, filled with electronic takes on an assortment of 70s and 80s songs.

First off, I need to get this out there: the vocals are pretty bad at times. They are slightly crude and carrying a distinct aura of “I recorded this in my bedroom”, and often at odds with the production values of the rest of the song. Which are impeccable by the way. Their synthesizers swirls and bleeps with aplomb, as you would expect with these people involved. However, it does feel a bit geriatric. For instance, take the ABBA cover “The Visitors”, which they manage to suck all the energy out of. And for some reason they’ve decided to remove the trademark synth melody from the original, and replace it with something far less interesting.

The other covers range from OK to pretty good, with “Smoke and Mirrors” probably taking the top spot. It just feels like this could have been much more. To end on a positive note, there’s an upcoming deluxe edition featuring the band’s first original song “Sunset”, and that’s actually really strong – melodic and synthetic. I hope the project’s future holds more of that, instead of tired covers.