Album Reviews

A friend told me that Blonde Redhead purists simply hate this album, or at least they’re disappointed by the New York based group’s 7th. Disappointed by what they claim is overproduction, over-thinking and artifice in place of substance.

I admit to not having been following them all that time so I have no basis for comparisons, but better late than never I say, having sampled this artful spaceship that travels back in time to the early ‘90’s to revisit musical orbits inhabited by guitar-jangly “shoe gazing” bands like My Bloody Valentine blended with techno-pop squiggles and hints of Thompson Twins and worse.

Heavily produced, and highly atmospheric, 23 fronted by the breathy female singer Kazu Makino, Blonde Redhead sounds more British than New York based, and spacey enough to have been wrung from Pink Floyd’s sweat blended with enough ennui to make Bryan Ferry blush.

Swirling atmospherics, kittenish vocals, precision production and enough hazy distance between you and the performers, but with deceptive clarity if you take the time to peer through the mist, Blonde Redhead’s 23 is probably analogous to Roxy Music’s Avalon: accepted grudgingly by diehard fans of harder rocking earlier albums, and embraced by a new set of fans, attracted to the sensuous rhythms, the complex staging, the palpable regret and the sense when it’s over that you’ve escaped to someplace ethereal yet real, and you can’t wait to get back there.

I’m not suggesting Avalon-like sonics, but behind the purposefully spacey scrim is a carefully designed backdrop filled with neon targets glistening with pleasure and awaiting your discovery. When it’s over you’ll awake from the trance refreshed, amused and hardly concerned by the lack of nourishment. 23 is all surface and proud of it, and there’s nothing wrong with that.



My copy had added spaciness thanks to side two’s being pressed grotesquely off center. I thought it was an effect until I heard the free MP3 download on my iPod and then put the record on and watched the tonearm wave back and forth, sickeningly.

The LP version includes a bonus 7” single sided single that continues the synth drum based, electronica augmented atmospheric disco euphoria. Like the album, you won’t know whether to dance or cry or both.