- First of all, I'm not sure this record even belongs on RA. It's pretty untechno, and as The Whitest Boy Alive's website states, "[we] started as an electronic dance music project in 2003. It has slowly developed into a band without any programmed elements." According to the band, each of the tracks was recorded live, with no overdubs. But the quartet still manages to bring a sequenced sensibility to the music. In fact, it's probably Erlend Øye's most head-noddable release to date. It's a playful record, and a grower that sweetens and deepens with repeat spins.
On early tracks "Keep a Secret" and "Intentions," guitar streamers flap through gusts of Rhodes piano, building a sort of pseudo-improvisational suite of Tropicália twee rock. On "Courage," Øye's trademark cotton-mouthed vocals get an unusual workout as he shouts, "Show some courage, courage, courage." Slow-burner "Rollercoaster Ride" has the narrator lamenting "Waiting every day for a line / For a sign from you," but this song is more like a melancholy cruise than a trip on the Giant Dipper. Supposedly, these are songs about breaking the rules, but really, they're about wondering if the rules were really there in the first place.
Keyboardist Daniel Nentwig gets down with his bad Doors-y piano self on the uptempo "1517," as Øye jazzily remarks that "people in northern Europe since medieval times / We find it hard to deal with when our dreams come true." As usual, his lyrics are articulate but vague, honest but non-confessional, and delivered with a distinctive, reedy affect. (If cries of pop anguish are called screamo, can sung-spoken snatches of European self-reflection be referred to as "thinko"?)
There's a tight jamminess to Rules, with quick-turn crescendos, clean-as-hell guitars and truly exceptional percussion from Sebastian Maschat that dashes and shivers and purrs like a happy porch cat in the sun. The occasional Mesozoic synth stab appears, courtesy of a vintage Crumar, though the most electronic track on the disc, "Dead End," is still at its core a warm guitar song. It smokes, too.
After the haunting "Island," the record is gone, its last harmonic echoing faintly. Rules explores much of the same emotional territory as Dreams and the two KoC LPs: longing and loss, relationship disconnects, tension between adult caution and childlike overstimulation and so on, but this record feels clearer, more optimistic, and certainly has a cannier rhythm section. Maybe it belongs on RA after all.
Tracklist 01. Keep a Secret
02. Intentions
03. Courage
04. Timebomb
05. Rollercoaster Ride
06. High On The Heels
07. 1517
08. Gravity
09. Promise Less Or Do More
10. Dead End
11. Island