- It is hard to think of dance pop in the '00s without Stuart Price. He was Madonna's music director for three international tours and her studio accomplice for Confessions on a Dance Floor. He had a steady stream of hands-in-the-air remixes for artists as varied as Felix Da Housecat, The Faint, Missy Elliot, Depeche Mode, Texas, Gwen Stefani, Starsailor and Seal, album production credits for the likes of Juliet and The Killers and you can't help but think that contemporary Top 40 electro-pop hopefuls such as Calvin Harris and Frankmusik owe their careers to him. Known for his many aliases (Les Rythmes Digitales, Pour Homme, Jacques Lu Cont, Thin White Duke, Man With Guitar), he also formed Zoot Woman, with Johnny and Adam Blake in the mid '90s as a way to channel his Brotherhood-era New Order fixations. Things Are What They Used to Be, released on their own label after being dropped by Wall of Sound, marks the band's return after a six-year absence.
The status quo and feelings of idleness are rarely winning material for pop songs, yet this third album, as the title suggests, is about glorifying the fact that nothing is gained—and nothing is lost—in Zoot Woman's world: The trio has simply gotten better and better at what they do. Included here are "We Won't Break" and "Live in My Head," the two low-key singles the band released in the past two years. The latter is especially reminiscent of the kind of ascending, major key pop à la "Hung Up" and "Sorry" Price so successfully produced for Madonna in 2005, and the same principle is applied to "Saturation" and "Things Are What They Used to Be," a duo that keep building and building to a liberating coda. Despite barely lasting four minutes, the title track is the closest Zoot Woman has ever gotten to pure, unadulterated dance floor-material euphoria.
Those looking for complexity will be disappointed. As always, Price rhythm section is overtly simple: the bass is pounding and repetitive and the kick drum is upfront in the mix, something he has perfected over the course of the years with his calculated-and-eight-minutes-every-time Thin White Duke remixes. This doesn't always work well in the context of the 3-minute pop song, though, as displayed on the slightly cacophonic "Memory" and "More Than Ever." But despite Price's sonic persona being overbearingly present, Zoot Woman's underestimated strength is Johnny Blake's voice. Suspended between resigned melancholy and hushed hopes, it shines with vulnerability on album opener "Just a Friend of Mine" and "Lonely by Your Side," a collaboration between Black and Azzido Da Bass that found its way on a Kitsuné compilation three years ago, and is happily resurrected here.
Predictable in many ways but still displaying a strong sense of self, Zoot Woman's Things Are What They Used to Be is a welcome return from everyone's favorite electro-pop underachievers and a surprising testament to Stuart Price's long-lasting virtuosity.
Tracklist 01. Just a Friend of Mine
02. Lonely By Your Side
03. More Than Ever
04. Saturation
05. Take You Higher
06. Witness
07. Lust Forever
08. Memory
09. We Won't Break
10. Things Are What They Used to Be
11. Blue Sea
12. Live in My Head