It’s all about the bass. Not, in this case, a thrumming Fender bass or a thwacking double bass, but the grumbling, rolling, pneumatic, tympanic rumble of a synthesiser bass. This is the seductive sound that underpins the third album from Michael Lovett, the multi-instrumentalist and sometime member of English electro band Metronomy, who records under the name NZCA Lines. Throughout, the bass is funky and slinky; it’s this, even more than the drum track, that drives things along on this enjoyable, kinetic collection; at times it approaches a state of dance-floor euphoria, its locked-in grooves, piano, high-register vocals, bubbling synths and synth-strings bringing to mind Daft Punk and even Chic, the heavily treated guitars on the title track and “For Your Love” woozily pleasurable.
Pure Luxury is partly concerned with affairs of the heart: so far, so predictable. But it also addresses environmental catastrophe and remorseless consumerism. It does so in a manner that is not always entirely convincing, in the same way that when Jamiroquai warned of an “Emergency on Planet Earth”, it wasn’t taken quite as seriously as, say, a Greenpeace report. “Real Good Time”, for instance, is a deeply cheerful plea to keep dancing in the face of “waterfalls of pesticide”. To be fair to Lovett, “Larsen” is a disturbingly offbeat account of the break-up of the Larsen ice shelf in Antarctica, a rare moment of real gravity. In the end, though, he decides that “Tonight Is All That Really Matters”. Who cares about the end of the world, when that bass is so rich and deep and funky?
★★★★☆
‘Pure Luxury’ is released by Memphis Industries
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July 10, 2020 at 11:35PM
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NZCA Lines: Pure Luxury — an enjoyable collection of funky basslines - Financial Times
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