When Vaudeville Smash first broke on the scene, their sound was more akin to a drunken marching band: happy, ridiculous and infectious. Dancing For The Girl is, sadly, some other kind of beast entirely. Damaged and slower, the sound has been pumped with a shot of sedative and '80s-inspired synth – that's been overused to the umpteenth degree.
Frontman Mac Lucchesi's vocals have edged up a few thousand octaves, producing a sound that would make even Barry Gibb sound like a baritone. The album's title track is drowsy '80s bedroom pop bliss, with Lucchesi 'oohing' and 'ahhing' over a synthboard of hums and saxophones, producing something akin to the musical lovechild of George Michael and the Bee Gees. It's all a little uncomfortable and weird. The jazz flutes come out to play in all their cringeworthy glory in Devil Said before the hoity sound is enveloped in a cheesy funk groove, while the ah-cha-cha beat rages on in Sailor Moon (yes, the cartoon). There are glimmers of their former brilliance in opener, Ghouls, with its enveloping choir boy intro and sped-up BPMs that see Lucchesi's trippy vocals soar and sink across his blissful falsetto. But it all goes a bit awry again in Honeymoon, a Beach Boys-splashed disco chic mash-up that ends up all a bit misshapen like some sad Play-Doh toy.
The cheek and breeze of their earlier material, like 2011's Roller Disco and 2010's Hey, are sorely missing, only to have been replaced by an addiction to a samey-samey disco-inspired chord progression, a shtick that just gets plain boring by the end.
