James Arden checks out the garage rockers latest album.
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Recipe for modern R'n'B album: liberal helpings of guest rappers and an overdose of sexual euphemisms.
In the music world, three years can almost feel like an eternity. With a gap between new material now averaging around 18 months (between the release of an album and the new single from the next album) anything longer can make a band, especially a lesser known one, give the appearance of completely falling off the face of the Earth. Such a break can prove completely detrimental to their careers, an example being Franz Ferdinand, whose third album, released about a year ago, failed to enact much interest. With The Optimist, the sophomore release from New Young Pony Club not even raising a whisper amongst the general populace, is it really out of sight, out of mind for these new rave popsters?
Years in the making, Fantastic Playroom (NYPC’s debut) certainly had plenty of a chance to stir up buzz within the musical community with the group becoming the poster-group for a genre whose inhabitants were never exactly able to combine their efforts enough to make it a true movement. Also, when listening to Fantastic Playroom, while there were some great pop singles it never felt like a complete album and as such there was a personal feeling that either the group had been coerced into releasing certain songs or that from square one they were suffering from an identity crisis rooted in the need to be seen as ‘cool’.
Three years later with the release of The Optimist there has been a line-up change and, most importantly of all, a tightening of the sound. The whole album is a far darker exercise in pop, with undercurrents of disco and electronica, all complimented by sultry vocals from front-woman Tahita Bulmer. A welcome relief is the removal of the monotone speaking sections which littered their debut. The point of these was obviously to allow the band to convey a highly sexual image but instead resulted in them sounding rather bored with their chosen profession.
This group’s new sound has shown such a profound change in direction from the effortful to the effortless that it is quite obvious that in changing labels they have been granted a creative freedom that was previously unavailable to them. As such The Optimist exudes a dark personality which should have reasserted the remarkable return of NYPC. However, with its lack of standout singles, instead existing as a cohesive whole, the publicity junket never exactly arrived and this album will likely go ignored; too much time has passed since NYPC were riding at the crest of the wave of public interest.
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