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WhoMadeWho

The Plot

(Gomma; US: 24 Feb 2009; UK: 23 Mar 2009)

After the success of “Space to Rent” and their disaffected version of “Satisfaction”, WhoMadeWho have a clear stamp on good-times sophisticated European electro-pop. The sound isn’t new, but this Danish trio does it just as well as fellow-Scandinavians Datarock. But WhoMadeWho are more sonically adventurous, and bring a playful attitude to their music that plays refreshing. On their second full-length album they’re in easy command of the form. WhoMadeWho have a distinctive voice—it’s just that it’s a combination of quite familiar components. There’s the Rapture’s dance-punk, LCD Soundsystem’s deadpan hipsterism, and any mainstream dance pop act’s silk-smooth vocals. More surprising, WhoMadeWho’s use of organic instrumentation—including the stark woodwinds that open “TV Friend”—allows them to branch out into timbres as diverse as pop-rock and Kaada-esque Spaghetti Western. When they venture further into the truly bizarre, as on the clickety-clack fuzz of “I Lost My Voice”, things get exciting. And through the whole thing, you can hear the group winking slyly from behind their fancy skeleton-costumes. Overall, though, The Plot is a surprisingly sedate album. Call it solid electropop for this season—under a dark cloud, they seem to say, we’ll sway but not jump up on our toes.

Rating:

Dan Raper has been writing about music for PopMatters since 2005. Prior to that he did the same thing for his college newspaper and for his school newspaper before that. Of course he also writes fiction, though his only published work is entitled "Gamma-secretase exists on the plasma membrane as an intact complex that accepts substrates and effects intramembrane cleavage". He is currently studying medicine at the University of Sydney, Australia.


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