The second album from the New Zealand band is better than the first.
It’s an unspoken but well-established notion that New Zealand is completely awesome. They have beautiful lakes and forests, an adorable little national bird, and they brought us the first man to reach the peak of Mount Everest. If you’re still in total denial, pick up a copy of Modern Love by the Auckland-based band Kids of 88 — you’ll be changing your mind in a split second.
The duo consists of best friends Jordan Arts and Sam McCarthy, who released Sugarpills (the vodka-chugging, party animal older sister of Modern Love) two years after their formation in 2008. The band then performed the rowdy, 80s pop inspired “Just a Little Bit” on a prom episode of the MTV television series Teen Wolf and won a New Zealand Music Award for Best Single of the Year for the same song. That’s a pretty large set of accomplishments for a little kiwi band recording tracks out of a spare bedroom.
Modern Love, the group’s sophomore production, sticks to their signature hand-clapping synth-pop formula, with a lot less teenage sex-drive, wiser lyrics, and just the right amount of spunk. While Sugarpills was best suited for that free-for-all birthday bash down the street, Modern Love will weasel its way into your car stereo, iPod, workout routine, morning rituals, and of course, your Halloween party — effectively making it perfect in a way that their first album wasn’t.
If your roommates tell you to “stop listening to that fucking song” more often than they remind you to fix that leaky faucet, “Komodo” will be a horrible problem for you. As the album’s first track, it’s upbeat and brimming with infectious electro-riffs. “Hypno” is equally light-hearted: it features Kids of 88’s simple, feel-good lyrics (“Fall back, unwind/ relax your mind”) and a healthy dose of sunny-sounding guitars and bright keyboards.
The rest of Modern Love contains its fair share of treats, too — take its first single “Tucan” as proof. Soft tribal echoes and the soothing vocals from The Naked and Famous’s Alisa Xayalith will put you right at home in the midst of a dewy, Tarzan-esque jungle. If you want to dance to that tune naked around a fire on Burnaby Mountain, the bears and coyotes won’t judge you. They’ll think you have seriously sick tastes in music.
Every album tends to have at least one dud, though — “India” should have been axed, because it pales in comparison to every other memorable song on the album.
Although Modern Love is short, with a total of 11 tracks, it’s undoubtedly worth your love. Just a warning, though: if you end up breaking your repeat button, you can’t say you weren’t told.
