Album: Dial M
Artist: Starflyer 59
Label: Tooth and Nail
Sounds like: The Killers, Franz Ferdinand, Joy Electric

Brian Eno once wrote (regarding U2’s Achtung Baby) that the best pop music somehow makes two seeming opposites exist simultaneously.

The opening track on veteran band Starflyer 59’s new album Minor Keys manages to be both buoyant and melancholy, appropriately, as it is a kind of tribute to The Smiths, with lyrics referencing Johnny Marr and sound borrowed rather obviously from The Smiths’ classic “There is a light that never goes out.” “M25” is more sweet melancholy and another standout in the band’s catalogue, with its simple guitar motif and mood like sunset over surf, and a lovely example of Starflyer’s new-millennium slowed-down surf guitar sound. Elsewhere on this, Jason Martin’s (by my counting) 11th album of new material under the Starflyer 59 banner, the 80s-inspired electronic pop that brother Ronnie brought to the Brothers Martin project still seems to linger.

It’s more New Romantic than Shoegazer. “Concentrate” sounds like New Order or OMD, with its slow bounce and synths swooping and diving, and features an angular Duran Duran guitar solo. “Taxi” has a more aggressive synth sound—closer to Depeche Mode—while the snappy guitar recalls that band’s “Enjoy the silence” from their stellar 1990 release Violator. “Who said it’s easy” and “Altercation” return us to now, sounding, respectively, like Keane and Franz Ferdinand.

The sound of “Automatic”—loping, descending bassline augmented by not much more than basic drums and sad, gypsy violins—is something different again. The album ends on more summery pop, all chiming guitar and lazy beat, over which Martin sings tongue-incheekily, “Sometimes I feel so obsolete because the kids want a faster beat” but that “my kids need to eat.” If he continues to make music this effortlessly good, it would be only fair if his kids eat well for some time to come.

Nick's Rating: 3/5