PhilPaine.com

This pleas­ant mix­ture of elec­tron­ic-psy­che­delia and pop is the prod­uct of Aus­tralians Luke Steele and Nick Lit­tle­more. There are so many eclec­tic influ­ences in this album that it would be exhaust­ing to iden­ti­fy them. Three songs, “Walk­ing on a Dream”, “We Are the Peo­ple” and “Stand­ing on the Shore”, have been chart hits in Anzac/UK ter­ri­to­ry, but I don’t think they’ve had much impact here in Cana­da. The biggest chart suc­cess, “Walk­ing on a Dream”, was the track that least appealed to me. There’s a retro-late-sev­en­ties/ear­ly-eight­ies feel, though the thick lay­er­ing is more con­tem­po­rary. Def­i­nite­ly worth check­ing out, espe­cial­ly if you have some ground­ing in eight­ies pop, Adam Ant, or Bowie, but not so much if you instinc­tive­ly eschewed these for hard-core, punk, or met­al dur­ing that tran­si­tion­al decade. Some of the orches­tral pas­sages, which drift away from the sev­en­ties-eight­ies ambiance, are quite charm­ing. Yes, the band is named after the J. G. Bal­lard nov­el. Released in Aus­tralia some­time last fall.