Staff Reviews

Kindness - World You Need A Change Of Mind

Review by Krystina Nellis

When it's good, it's almost blinding. The rest of the time, it's very good at making you think it's giving you songs, when all it’s actually giving is hooks and ideas that often don't go anywhere, like 'Bombastic's half-baked nouveau blues. And vocals drowned in reverb like on 'Cyan'. And sax. Please dear God, can we agree an amnesty on the ridiculous overuse of sax now?»

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one of the most anticipated albums for 2012. imagine if the iconic arthur russell was still alive, then you can believe he would be making music like this. yes, its really that great. the album was recorded with cassius's philippe zdar, who has worked with phoenix, the rapture, kanye west and the beastie boys. the music has the meandering logic of dreams and fantasies, merging eras and locations, making strange connections seem inevitable, and finding beauty in unlikely places. it's an album which sets the mind wandering and wondering. 'swingin' party' lowers the pulse and rubberizes the limbs of the replacements' song until it feels like drifting through a party on valium. 'gee wiz' is a creamy ambient swoon, coloured with wordless vocals and sunlit guitar, like a balearic response to david crosby's 'if i could only remember my name'. 'house' has the gloopy psychedelic r&b flavour of mid-80s prince at his strangest, while 'that's alright' is a dream alliance of nile rodgers, giorgio moroder and afrika bambaataa circa 1985. one clue to adam's modus operandi comes in the middle of bombastic with a litany of influences that nods wrily in the direction of daft punk's teachers, citing kate bush and paul westerberg; randy newman and larry levan; neil young and chic. another clue arrives amid the yielding deep house of 'seod': "it's better if you let go." it's pop music but it's slippery and enigmatic too. it sounds slick yet underground. it's got recognisable reference points - the leftfield disco of walter gibbons, the cosmopolitan rhythms of grace jones and tom tom club, the frictionless 80s r&b of alexander o'neal, the blurry polaroid pop of ariel pink - but they're in an unfamiliar context.
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