Empire of the Sun - Walking On a Dream (Virgin)
3/5
By: Tom Hocknell
They have been in most 'hotly tipped bands' for 2009 lists, although they're not technically new. Instead they are another electronic-laced side project from an alt-rock band - in this case Australia's Luke Steele, from Sleepy Jackson, with Pnau's Nick Littlemore (once seen sharing a band with Ladyhawke's Pip Brown). And whilst it doesn't quite have the primary school 'wet break' abandon of Neon Neon, there's still plenty of interest here. Shame it's all in the first half.
The title track and 'We Are The People' have such a shameless innocence about them, it's like the Beloved and late 80's synth-Prince never went away. They perfectly capture that post-rave euphoria, with a gleeful call to the future. In fact the opening four songs are anthemic, acoustic, electronic, pop bliss, and just when you think music can't get any better, it doesn't.
The album crumples into a wall of apathy. Instrumental, 'Country' could be on one of those relaxation compilations, the ones with covers of placid lakes taken on long exposure. And if you do wake up, you'll come round to 'The World', which frankly should have remained an instrumental, as it careers into progressive, experimental ground, with a falsetto vocal and nails on the blackboard accompaniment that must have seemed like a good idea at the time; though what that 'time' consisted of should be left to psychotherapists.
The fault with this album is that it feels like they lost interest half way through, although presumably not to design the cover art. At least I hope not. When Word magazine comes to its monthly best of/worst of, for covers, this takes the biscuit. It appears to have been conceived by a Conspiracy Theorist who spent the 80's on acid, thus missing the Athena range of similarly garish and fraudulently spiritual posters. Either that or it's a Star Wars prequel I hope to see even less than the actual ones. It's beyond terrible, it freewheels past the 'so good its bad' stop and halts on a dead end siding called crap. For once it is a blessing to be ill served on an iPod display.
Thankfully the album does recover, and although doesn't regain the perfection of the opening tracks, 'Swordfish Hotkiss Night', (yes, we know) skips a modern R&B groove, and it finishes classily, on the touching, synth wave of 'Without You'.
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