Album Review: Muscles - Manhood

Having a reputation for making hipster indie-electro, the quality of Muscles' songwriting is often overlooked for his carefully crafted aesthetic, both musically and visually. Five years since the release of his debut, and after some quite public spats with his record label Modular, the follow up Manhood has actually arrived. There's no surprises really, it's the same up-tempo, dancefloor-friendly electronic pop, with almost bizarre down-pitched vocals and lots of happy-sounding squelchy synth sounds.

He's clearly spent the time since the last record polishing the songs themselves rather than focusing on going into new territory production-wise, and right from the opening track Kiss Hello this is apparent. When he gets into club mode, for the most part it's still really interesting. Heatwave and 1823 have what you can really best describe as house beats while maintaining the same energy and melodic hooks that make the whole record palatable.

Just Breathe and Brain Freeze use a happy sounding electro-tech backdrop for his songs to rest on, and even the overuse of lyrical cliches on Just Breathe seems deliberate and well thought out. It's certainly not the only time he takes the piss out of both himself and the whole musical movement he is at both times lampooning and celebrating – more evidence of this on the excellent first single Girl Crazy Go.

It's the follow up he had to make, whether five years was too long to keep the momentum going is yet to be seen. Also, it would be interesting to hear where he would have progressed to already with a more prolific output, but at least he hasn't derailed his unique sound or over-thought what needed to be done.