Though not of the wave of new new-wave bands, Echoboy's (a.k.a. Richard Warren) third CD, Giraffe, dips into the '80s pool that's been so damned crowded lately. You know it: The singalong, dark-in-the-corners mix of guitar rock and synthesized pop based around New Order beats. It's completely derivative—and a decisive break from the post-psychedelic experimentation of his first two efforts. But like the similarly influenced and influential Interpol, he mixes his inspirations with newer sounds, warping it all into an inviting mash of music fit for a smoky dance club stuffed into back room of a dark bar.
Warren's thin, emotive vocals are terribly reminiscent of Moby and depending on your tolerance for the little bald man, it'll either drive you insane or be easy to ignore. "Don't Destroy Me" takes the resemblance to the extreme: Think Moby's last singles, on which he sang, not the richly sampled works of Play.
Listen to "Good on TV," blink and it's Neil Tennant, not Echoboy, singing this tune so reminiscent of the Pet Shop Boy's obsession with the me decade's vapidity and image-consciousness: "All that we can do is sit and wait/ for the money to accumulate/ but it's never gonna happen to me/ because I don't look good on TV." "Wasted Spaces" is nearly bizarre in its proximity to Primal Scream. The drums on "Nearly All the Time" recall both the spare, tribal drumming style of Pigface's founder Martin Atkins and Pop Will Eat Itself's poppy industrial dance. "Hi Speed in Love" is drenched in the paranoid, atmospheric trip-hop of Massive Attack.
Echoboy admits it all in his lyrics: "This is nothing new/it's all been done before." But then he moves on, capturing the best of what came before without devolving into the silly posturing and Euro robotics of electroclashers. The richly layered tunes, infused with his personality and soul, lend an organic take to what could have just been an empty and imitative exercise in dance music.
Echoboy Giraffe
