Ima Robot in Bloomington, MN

As
nu-metal
and the last vestiges of
grunge
have waned, the popular embrace of "real" or "garage"
rock
has caused an uptick of ultrafashionable musicians who artfully subtract the more inaccessible parts of genres like slutty
punk rock
, fey
new wave
, and
goth
, and use the highly brand-identifiable remainder to spruce up what are essentially hooky
pop
songs.
Hot Hot Heat
and
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
have each performed this operation with skill; now,
Ima Robot
wants a piece of the action. The quintet is led by the histrionic yelp of
Alex Ebert
, who sounds like
Suede
's
Brett Anderson
doing a
Johnny Rotten
impersonation and sports a bizarre haircut suggestive of
Zan
from
the Wonder Twins
. Besides a guitarist and electronicist, the band also includes bassist
Justin Meldal-Johnsen
and drummer
Joey Waronker
, two session pros who are also veterans of
Beck
's band. The L.A. force is strong in these guys, and it shows in the refined, curiously vapid quality of their music.
"Dynomite,"
"Song, No. 1,"
"Alive"
are the first three songs on the album, but they're also the most representative (barring the cheeky, effete
rap
of
"Black Jettas"
). The songs can be called so much -- glammy
punk
,
the Escape Club
meets
Love and Rockets
-- but when the makeup comes off they're just well-done
songs, as much sticky fun as a fruit roll-up, but unfortunately just as substantive.
-- especially the lyrically and visually outrageous
Ebert
-- seem to understand this. It seems to be part of the fun to reference the right references while rocking the cheap seats with easy power chords (
"A Is for Action"
) and mashups of
Bowie
electro
-
(
"Philosophee"
). And maybe it is fun, depending on your point of view. After all, many of the groups
pays tribute to were equally as empty. But
's fancy, yet expensively dirty version of this game just seems particularly affected, and ultimately too derivative to fully enjoy. ~ Johnny Loftus