Album Review: Alpine - Yuck

Melbourne six-piece Alpine brought us glossy, electro-pop on their debut back in 2012; singles Gasoline and Seeing Red were album flagships, injecting the squeaky clean production with warmth via Phoebe Baker and Lou James’ lush harmonic piping.

Foolish, the forerunner single for their second album, weaves the same sort of magic, consequently piquing expectations for something bigger and better. But that’s not quite the case. While Yuck’s production can’t be faulted with Dann Hume’s assured hands once again behind the desk, that pristine, sometimes cold quality of the girls’ breathy pouting and the boys’ perfectly quantised playing is so much more pervasive the second time around and renders it almost two-dimensional. 

The same great things about Alpine still abound. The almost alien quality the two leading ladies manage to transmit through their vocals makes tracks like Come On and Jellyfish edgier than their upbeat succinct guitar strums and pulsing beats would otherwise suggest. The oriental shimmer in Much More and tropicana vibe in Crunches are fun, and the lush sonic build-up and cynical lyrics (“when you’re gone the world seems brighter”) clash in a delightful way in Shot Fox. But once you’re past the halfway mark, there’s trouble. Damn Baby’s burst of brass begs for a more colourful landscape in which to frolic, and Standing Not Sleeping simply ebbs along. The vocal lines that refuse to deviate from note perfection, and the guitar and synths that stop short of meandering beyond rigid motifs chip away at the interest levels. It’s a reminder that perfection isn’t everything.