Datarock Red
You’d expect Norwegian disco-rock revivalists to warm up the vintage synths and Nu-Romantic croon and […]
You’d expect Norwegian disco-rock revivalists to warm up the vintage synths and Nu-Romantic croon and deliver a loosely conceptual album about a future where music technology stopped in 1983, right? Datarock slings relentless disco beats and clean, Afrobeat-ish guitars, but a lack of true hooks makes Red a pleasantly forgettable listen. Fredrik Saroea’s writing is clever on “True Stories” (every line is a Talking Heads title) and “Back in the Seventies,” with his fantasies of Northern Soul brooding, but too many returns to the same well make “Molly” (a love letter to Ringwald, naturally) cross the line from precocious to gross.