Album Review: Collarbones - Return

Collarbones are a force all of their own. On Return they can be heard switching it up from down-tempo pop tunes to straight-up acid house jams in the space of a heartbeat. Their take on club music, dance music, electronic music, whatever you wish to call it, is removed from trend and focused entirely on making ears tingle and feet move.

Marcus Whale has the melodic vocal tones of the finest r’n’b performers and he can make them soar or surrender over beats with his bandmate Travis Cook. There’s something deliciously subversive in the way the sung voice is often disassociated from the central beat, and it’s only once immersed in the music that it all seems to fit perfectly in place.

There’s a clever mix of catchy tunes on Return: Only Water featuring Oscar Key Sung is one that’s bound to be stuck in brains after a few spins. Big reverberating synths, two-part harmonies and a mess of modulated noises make for a magnificent tune. There are clever little hooks laid into each track that enter the mind deceptively and keep the listener coming back for another listen, like the trilling synth twirl on Emoticon, perfectly complimented by Whale’s voice calling out “echoing emotion/duplicate devotion/binary emotion.” Turning is an immediate standout on the record; lavishly produced, vocals catch up with an electronic crescendo that is pure dance magic. It’s hard not to envision yourself on a dancefloor somewhere, lasers and fog machines in full force, leaping in time.