The robots are coming, but we knew that already. They’ve come and settled amongst us, and no one really put up a fight in the end. Sinister as it might sound, they do seem friendly,
their single eyes smiling and hopeful, not yet disappointed by what a mess we’ve made here.
Count Out Ceili Band is the artist-still-known-as-Protestant Work Ethic’s latest foray into experimental synth pop, and it sounds like either nostalgia for a better future or hope for a
better past. Either way, it brims with a gentle, brittle beauty, a tender breed of disembodiment. In
Skip Ad, a symphony of synths declares its presence, like a series of anthems
auditioning for tiny revolutions. The artist’s voice comes in sparingly and to great effect, as in the Carmina Burana-esque choir backgrounds of
They’re Coming Here To Get What’s Ours
and the post-minimalist pulsations of
Next Stop Rocket Science. When Usaty comes in singing, ‘Don’t you sometimes feel like a fucking moron / Don’t I sometimes feel like a fucking moron’
with a chorus of forlorn ‘Sha-la-las,’ well, don’t you?
What did all the bells and whistles buy us, we wonder, a plastic trash-scape where we cling to scraps of kindness. But kindness is all over this record somehow, in the melodies that creep
and climb in every corner of the music, from bass to filigree; in the grooves that get you running, moving in spite of the sadness they hold; in the way the strangest sounds teach you how to
listen to them, how to find the beauty in the garbage, the human in the robot, the songs in the white noise.
(
Meaghan Burke)
