Beat Box

We Say...

Review by Todd Burns

Much has been made of Glass Candy's transformation from art-rock also-rans into death disco doyens. The big problem? It's hard to get your hands on evidence of either incarnation. Glass Candy's official releases are often vinyl-only, and the few label-sanctioned CD's have been snapshots of a band speeding away from its previous identity anyway. To properly chart the progression of Johnny Jewel and Ida No, you need to be lucky enough to see them live and snap up their myriad tour-only CD-R's. Locked within these blue-bottomed gems is the slow, but inexorable move that the group has taken from live drums to mechanized beats, from messy guitar feedback to glistening, thin synthesizers.

Beat Box is yet another of these releases. Serving as the tour EP for their late 2007 trek down the West Coast, it collects versions of tracks that the duo have been working on for the past year. (You can hear slightly different takes on "Rolling Down the Hills" and "Computer Love" on the After Dark compilation.) Here, the group's electronic sound emerges fully formed: "Beatific" lumbers along on a farting bassline, slightly off-time handclaps and No's trademark icy delivery. (Credit someone in the Candy family for figuring out that No's personality-less personality works just as well over screeching guitars as it does over skittering drum machines.)

The move to electronic music, however, doesn't completely explain the revitalization of the group. That's mostly down to Jewel, who imbues the synths with enough quavering and human error to keep things interesting. "Candy Castle" makes like a decayed Southern bounce anthem replete with horn fanfare, "Life After Sundown"'s is the unholy marriage of Italian horror soundtrackers Goblin and French disco God Cerrone. And "Digital Versicolor" is Moroder through and through, right down to the quasi-insipid lyrics. No busies herself throughout by running us through the spectrum. ("This is red, red, red/ This is orange, orange, orange/ This is yellow, this is yellow, this is yellow, this is yellow, this is yellow, this is yellow/ This is green, green, green/ This is blue, blue, blue.") Beat Box's secret: by the time it's over, you'll want to hear it again, again, again.