(Wall Of Sound/Liberator)

American duo swap Presets comparisons for nü-disco leftovers

When Shy Child’s excellent third album, Noise Won’t Stop, dropped in 2007, the phrase “The American Presets” was bandied about. This formulation always struck me as unsatisfactory: sure, like The Presets, Shy Child are two guys who play synths and drums with cartoonishly high energy, but the comparisons end there. Where The Presets strive for a dark, dancefloor-friendly sound, trading on Hamilton’s distinctively creepy vocal timbre, Shy Child are more buoyant and boyish, trading on Pete Cafarella’s girlish yelp and Nate Smith’s frenetic drumming. Liquid Love, their follow-up to Noise Won’t Stop, will blast the Presets comparisons away by opening with a cheeky Fleetwood Mac appropriation (the tinkling synths that open Everywhere are recreated to open this album’s title track). It swiftly becomes evident that Shy Child have been listening to a lot of blog-friendly nü-disco in their three-year hiatus: lead single Disconnected is a slice of bubblegum dance full of Braxe and Falke-esque soft-pad synths; while Take Us Apart steals a few pages from the Oakley/Moroder Together In Electric Dreams playbook. Bizarrely, they name a song after The Beatles, but it’s more a tired Hall & Oates pastiche than a tribute to the fab four. Overall, Liquid Love sounds like a group trying desperately to sound contemporary, with mixed results. After listening to Liquid Love, I can’t help but wish Shy Child had kept on doing their own thing – after all, “The American Presets” is a better label than “those damned Johnny-come-latelys.”

***
CHAD PARKHILL

Be first to comment on this article

Write Comment
Comments are submitted for possible publication on the condition that they may be edited. Poster's IP addresses are logged.
Name:
Comment:
Code:*