Darwin Deez’s first trip into the musical world was a sunny and quirky, yet acerbically bitter foray into indie pop. A
negative Cajun Dance Party seemed the most obvious comparison for its
lo-fi, almost twee sensibilities. ‘Radar Detector’ and ‘Constellations’
had the ability to be true earworms; the melody stuck in your head for
days and days. Unfortunately, with Songs For Imaginative People, no such thing properly exists, making what was a promising start seem like a waste.
Deez has chosen to focus on the darker, more chaotic sounds he tried
out first time around but they were, by and large, the weakest tracks on
the record. So an entire album of overly negative, often nihilistic
wittering is too difficult to bother with.
There are some really bum metaphors here too; ‘Redshift’ basically
becomes an extended game of madlibs in which he replaces words with a
space themed equivalent, thus ‘quirks’ becomes ‘quarks’. There are
occasional bursts of dark humour but the rest almost becomes cringey.
At least with the first album we had the pleasure of some sweet and
quirky melodies, to offset the clunky metaphors, but here Deez has
whacked up the fuzz pedal to 11 making something overly chaotic to the
point of incoherence. Coming across as rather unstructured – and not in a
way people would see math rock but really, really unpredictable and
random at times – it removes any element of melody that might exist and
made the first album so appealing if slightly flawed.
Gone is the Darwin Deez that danced like he was auditioning for the
newest Wes Anderson film with his baggy shirts and headband. I’d quite
like that one back, please.
2/5
Recommended download: ‘Free (The Editorial Me)
