Black Neon reviewed
The Black Neon
Arts & Crafts
(Memphis Industries)
Heralded Britpop/Krautrock craftsmen The Black Neon pinball through synth and rock tones on debut LP.
The trouble reconciling The Black Neon’s ultrasexy tonnage is finding where the robotic German influences end and the pseudo-glam rock begins.
Because the sounds operated on separate poles in the ’70s, the audacity of combining the two on Arts & Crafts seems suspect at best. Yet by throwing everything in the blender, The Black Neon somehow succeed. Of course, the prime spots (“The Truth”) aren’t brilliant hybrids at all, but straightforward butt rock pimped through psychedelic pipelines. “TX81Z” could be written off as neo-’80s schlock, but in the context of retrofuturism like “The Ghosts” bears them out. It’s an outer-region sprawl combining 2001 asexuality over a swimming melodicism exposing masters at play. Surely this sounds like bullshit, but in avoiding Britpop’s anthemic jocularity, they actually pull off a seething wherewithal that latches onto electro’s blankcheck future without forsaking its sterile past.
— Kevin Keegan
Click here to download “Ralph & Barbara.”
