The 2kDozen 500: #337 - Sun Airway, "Soft Fall"

In some ways, this works as an antidote or something more palliative to counteract the increasingly samey electronically-tethered version of pop that is scattered across all the airwaves these days. But it too makes many of the same moves, glides across the same frozen surfaces. "Black Noise" is a slippery case in point: nothing really gets going, stuff about switching on the radio. Is that still a legitimate trope? We're hardly in the days of radio representing freedom - either of the highway, bedroom transistor or Free Europe varieties. What does radio represent now? Just noise. A cacophony of shock jocks and empty-headed breakfast banter.

The three "Activity" tracks are quite nice - in a swirly PSB manner. Chris Lowe at the heart of the controls. The other tracks lack some lyrical pinch ("Over My Head" and "Close", for examples) to tug the music in a different direction. One track that stands out is "Wild Palms", arpeggiated strings flushing out like ferns. I don't know if there's a David Lynch reference in there somewhere - but it has the same dense seethe as the opening shots of the lawn in Blue Velvet.

"Laketop Swimmers" is nice, but suffers from the same problem. Nothing to distinguish it from what is going on everywhere. Images of swimming. Not inspiring.

Rating: Drifting out of Contention