Various Artists - Kitsune New Faces 2 Album Review
The deal hasn't changed: the world's best known couture indie label is still releasing everything from pop to polo shirts, having unearthed the likes of Years & Years, TDCC, Citizens! and, most recently, BeatauCue as they mix style with Gallic substance.
'New Faces 2' is one of their periodic compilations which has a says-it-on-the-tin vibe: 14 tracks (plus a bonus extra on the CD) all released by acts which should - unless you've been hanging out in all the right Shoreditch bars - be new to you. By way of setting expectations, if their previous collections were anything to go by, they confirmed that label supremo Gildas Loaëc is a man with a musical vision that sits somewhere between Europhile gloss and the preppy, Ivy League jangle of American outfits like Vampire Weekend and, perhaps less obviously, 'Kids'-era MGMT.
If that sounds like an odd combination, much of 'New Faces' is determined by these slightly narrow operating parameters and, by extension, a frisson of orthodoxy. Opener 'One Wing' by New Yorkers Beau is a sixties-indebted torch song in the mould of Lucius, whilst Suisfine's 'Heat' is glorious slacker rock, but, largely, the texture of most of the songs here is pristine and synthetic. This doesn't mean that, in series tradition, the odd gem isn't unfurled: RIVRS' 'Last love' is naked, almost prone R&B, with singer Charlotte delivering the band's dark pop in crystalline words; Danglo's 'Catch My Eye' is as sludgy as the Thames by which it was made; whilst Jai Wolf's mix of Mocki's 'Weekend' re-frames its New Jack feel with beeps and bleeps, giving it the authentic je né sais quoi of the week's best two days.
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