★★★★☆
Theatrical prog-rock-style elements against miserly tech house from Spitzer’s Damien and Matthieu Brègère mean The Call is not an album you should be making snap judgements on. While setting up as a darkened dance floor trundle, the brothers adding blood and tears to the onset of sweat, the big guitar twangs that clap and illuminate like thunder and lightning, and tremulous build-ups creating many a cliff-hanger, might have you worrying about dance-rock shortfalls.
Except, well it’s not really dance-rock by definition, more a knowledge of when to strike the electronica with French flair and the theatre of guitar. The tension-ridden, tribal electro of “Madigan” sounds as if it should come with accompanying choreography to immediately realign perceptions: it certainly doesn’t let on that a lurching synth-pop stereotype in black called “Clunker” should follow either. Its dance floor acts hint at disquiet, but the nip and tuck, who-can-draw ubiquity doesn’t allow it to burgeon, with the explosion that you’re hoping/waiting for again unexpected – this time a Björk-like outpouring from Kid A, on the overcast strain “Too Hard to Breathe.”
A little bemusing as it stop-starts between forlorn episodes and something to dance the angst away to, there’s enough to make you start over and take stock, and props to Spitzer for not playing to type or simply accepting the dos and don’ts of album-making.
File under: Justice, Agoria, Mumbai Science