No. 33 of 2011: Gang Gang Dance - Eye Contact

On albums which seem to be so musically schizophrenic that we seem to miss the details on the first listen, we can either take that initial impression and assign it permanent association or we can go back and listen again and try to see if, below and among the scattered pieces, we see what the artist is really trying to convey, the intent and purpose of the album. And why they felt it necessary to use that particular set of rules and defined or undefined musical influences.  These albums may require repeated listens to fully understand what lies beneath the seemingly impervious exterior and what we find may make all the effort worth it, or not.  It's never a sure thing.   For every album that rewards multiple listens and reveals more and more of itself, there are also those albums which are only superficially interesting, that use the inpenetrable nature of their musical facade to entice listeners to give them more of a chance than they honestly deserve.

Gang Gang Dance have been making this kind of inpenetrable music for years.  They bathe their layers of punchy synthesizers with hard-hitting bass riffs, amorphous guitar parts, and the equally inpenetrable vocals of singer Lizzi Bougatsos.  With Eye Contact, they use these disparate parts to create something wholy of a piece, much like their past albums, but more fully fleshed out and devoid of the filler interludes, creative though they may have been, that pockmocked their previous releases. This album propels itself forward towards some indeterminable point in the distance with an almost religious fervor, and the bands intends to carry us with them as far we'll let them.  Songs like fuzzed-out synth monster "Mindkilla" and the rending tribute to deceased bandmate Nathan Lennox "Glass Jar" show that Gang Gang Dance have come a long way from those early records, that their musical tenacity has yielded a maturity that was barely hinted on those albums.  As you slip further and further under the musical influence of Eye Contact, you begin to see the music coalesce and form a shifting enigmatic work of sustained creativity. The band has always wanted us to be right beside them, they want us to know what they know.  And with this album, they extend their hands and ask us to just hang on and enjoy the ride.

Tracklisting:

01. Glass Jar
02. ∞
03. Adult Goth
04. Chinese High
05. MindKilla (listen to the mp3 below)
06. ∞ ∞
07. Romance Layers
08. Sacer
09. ∞ ∞ ∞
10. Thru and Thru