British ‘left hand’ pop artist, Joe Goddard, has finally graced us with his second LP, Electric Lines. It’s been a long eight year wait since his debut solo album Harvest Fest, but makes up for it with the 10 tracks on the LP full of irresistible, futuristic hymns. Starting off as a member of Hot Chip and the 2 Bears, Goddard has gone on to become a Grammy award nominated songwriter, producer, DJ and co-founder of Greco Roman label.
Electric Lines is somewhat different to previous music created by the well respected artist. More vintage, 80s inspired samples and light weight space age beats fill every corner of this album. The first single from Electric Lines, “Ordinary Madness”, featuring English vocalist SLO (Jess Mills) is smooth and boppy, and went straight onto my ‘Wake the hell up’ playlist. I expect to see this song playing on many people’s video edits from their Groovin the Moo and Splendour experiences in the next few months.
The second track, “Lose Your Love”, sounds like it was taken straight from a disco and mixed with the sounds an old Game Boy console would make when turned on. Starting off as a meditation like beat, it slowly grows into a disco track with highly distorted,wavey vocals.
Other credible must listens from the album are “Lasers”, which literally sounds like a bunch of lasers zipping around your speakers, “Music is The Answer” feat. Danny Tenaglia (super spacey, imagine flying around in a UFO in space in 40 years), and “Electric Lines”, which is probably the closest you will get to as love song on this LP, with lyrics such as: ‘Everyone’s updating their hardware… replacing the things from last year’.
The use of old school techno makes Electric Lines a very unique sound in this modern day of dubstep and heavy bass drops. Overall, Electric Lines is super refreshing, and captures the present day we all live in together, being consciously addicted to technology and Google. I for one am super excited to see what is to come from Joe Goddard.
Review Score: 7 out of 10.
Electric Lines is out now.
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