Discovery – LP Review
What happens when you put together members from two successful indie rock bands? Well, if those two happen to be Vampire Weekend’s producer Rostam Batmanglij and Ra Ra Riot’s lead singer Wes Miles, you naturally end up with a debut disc filled with…electronic drumbeats and auto-tune? Wow, ok. Anyone who is looking for nothing more than a subtle variation on the Vampire Weekend/Ra Ra Riot sound should stay far, far away from Discovery’s LP. The two musicians dive deep into auto-tuned, syncopated electro/RnB/pop and come up with a handful of gems.
The album opens with a veritable one-two punch, ‘Orange Shirt’ followed by ‘Osaka Loop Line’. Both are radio-ready summer jams, complete with glistening RnB beats. I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear R. Kelly or Akon start singing over them. Thankfully, that didn’t happen, and both songs are probably going to be on repeat in my car for the rest of the summer.
The next song, ‘Can You Discover?’, is a remake of Ra Ra Riot’s ‘Can You Tell’. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with this particular track. Along with the rest of the world, I love ‘Can You Tell’, so Discovery’s reworking seems almost like a step backward from the orchestral pop bliss of the original. However, after a couple listens it grew on me, and the less I compared it to the original track, the more I liked it. It’s not trying to improve upon Ra Ra Riot’s version, it’s just looking at it a different way.
‘I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend’ brings in Angel Dreadoorian from the Dirty Projectors to sing the hook, which sounds like every other RnB radio hit. Other than Angel’s persistent pleas of “I wanna be your boyfriend”, it’s not a great song; with tinny beats and an overuse of auto-tune, its perceived glittery goodness is only skin deep.
‘So Insane’ is another gem, with a tempo-changing pop chorus catapulting it into the elite group with ‘Orange Shirt’ and ‘Osaka Loop Line’. Unlike ‘I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend’, the auto-tuning actually makes the song better.
While the first half of the album is mostly awesome, the second half is mostly filler. ‘Swing Tree’ is cute, but forgettable. The cover of Jackson 5’s ‘I Want You Back’ was bearable the first few times, and I might have actually liked it the first time, but after a multiple listens, it gets so bad it’s offensive. ‘It’s Not My Faut (It’s My Fault)’ and ‘Slang Tang’ aren’t bad, but like ‘Swing Tree’, they’re easily forgotten.
The only real standout song in the second half of the album is ‘Carby’, where Ezra Koening of Vampire Weekend is brought in to sing. It sounds like Vampire Weekend went to a studio to record a new song, but they forgot all their instruments, and all the studio had was a synthesizer. Even with auto-tune, Koening’s voice sounds distinct and recognizable, and the song moves along happily as a Vampire Weekend spinoff.
Generally, I like what Batmanglij and Miles have done with Discovery. They tried something new with odd electronic pop, and they pulled off some great songs while for the most part avoiding terrible ones. You may love it. You may hate it. Regardless, it’s a worthwhile listen.
If you want to hear what they have to say and learn more about the band, check out their myspace.
Discovery – Can You Discover?
Discovery – So Insane
Discovery – Carby
Tags: album
