(Kitsuné/Inertia)

An interesting début that arrives three years too late

Australian indie-dance types – which, if the blogosphere and my personal experience is anything to go by, includes pretty much anyone who has stumbled into Family on a Friday night – will know Cazals from either Modular’s Leave Them All Behind compilation of two years ago, or from the more recent Kitsuné Maison Five. But indie-dance types aren’t really the target audience for What Of Our Future, as Brit-poppy opener New Boy In Town aptly demonstrates. The second track – a cover of the Spandau Ballet standard To Cut A Long Story Short – only adds to this impression, being more like Bloc Party than Digitalism, while the third (Somebody, Somewhere) indicates that, despite the gameboy-esque backing bleeps, Cazals are really all about MOR pop-rock wrapped in a slick nü-rave package. The album cover is therefore an indication of what the album wants to be rather than what it is: the Millau Viaduct is sleek, modern, and very French, while the music on here arrives sounding already stillborn: rough around the edges, the kind of thing that kids danced to before they heard Klaxons, and hopelessly British. Had this arrived in 2005, it would have received five-star reviews and sold like hot cakes, but What Of Our Future suffers from the kind of myopia that those who leap onto bandwagons have always suffered: in trying to be the next big thing, Cazals have ended up as an embarrassing reminder of the last big thing.

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CHAD PARKHILL

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