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On Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes I thought they had some great things going for them. . .
1. Kyp Malone's guitar playing- he sort of just wails on a few notes and creates these cool echoey guitar textures- he doesn't lay out chords or play leads, he just kind of has this cool textural things going on
2. Tunde Adebimpe's lead vocals (and Kyp's backup vocals) - very good, lots of talent, and the mixture of low singing and high falsetto singing and transitions back and forth were very awesome
3. The rhythm section- fuzzy/synthy simplistic baselines, and really good drums with very interesting rhythms. Very energetic to very somber at times.
4. Lots of nice hooks
That was awesome, but between their last album and their new album, their vocal melodies have gone down in quality, the energy has gone down, and there is less and less of Kyp's textural guitar work and more and more studio orchestrations. Earlier on the pieces with brass and synth were pretty cool, but now it is just starting to get a bit irksome.
I don't mind them flashing a little bit of a Prince influence, or changing their sound a bit, but I think they've got away from the things that made them a band with a lot of potential and shifted into a band that will be "pretty good but not great"
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