Music Review: De Lux, Voyage

By Less Lee Moore

“I wanna say we’re doing great/but there’s something wrong, something wrong”
—”Better At Making Time”

De Lux’s self-titled, four-song 2013 EP was fantastic. I think I listened to its first track, “Better At Making Time,” three times a day for a straight week. Now they’ve got a full-length album, with a few of the songs from that EP and the added bonus of more great songs. Don’t let the deceptively simple cover art fool you. Voyage is 55 minutes of extravagance in musical form.

I’m not sure who plays or sings what, but De Lux consists of “multi-instrumentalists” Sean Guerin and Isaac Franco, who’ve not only been friends since their teen years, but have also been making music since then. It shows. De Lux is masterful at creating a killer beat and then injecting its rhythm into your veins, adding and subtracting various elements so it never gets boring.

With such excellent music, it’s important not to forget the vocals, although they’re too good to easily forget, blending (as they do) with the music perfectly. The album boasts nine songs of frantic, frenetic delivery—like someone perennially on the verge of a freakout—via falsettos, baritones, and even shouting. At times, the vocals sound uncannily like David Byrne singing a duet with Mark Mothersbaugh. I’m not clear on all the lyrics, but you’ll sing along anyway.

Like the EP, Voyage opens with “Better At Making Time” and THAT BASSLINE. Soon, a guitar melody like Chic via Duran Duran creeps in, interspersed by toms and then another melody which sounds like it’s being played on steel drums. Oh, and there’s cowbell. Hands down, it is one of the most instantly luscious, impeccably addictive songs I’ve heard in ages. I could probably write a review about just this song. It’s seven and a half minutes and you’ll wish it were longer. Even though “Better At Making Time” doesn’t sound like any of the other songs, it introduces you to what De Lux is all about.

Both “Moments” and “I’ve Got To Make A Statement (No More Likes and Ums)” have spaceship noises, neither of which sound like each other. The former has a sticky beat, one that bounces like a giant rubber ball in your skull. The latter gets down into funky disco, with flashes of Daft Punk at their best. Throughout, there’s electric piano and a neurotic synth sneaking through and shifting around to create the same feeling of tension that marks classic disco tunes like “Groove Line.”

“Love Is A Phase” cops the riff from Gary Numan’s “Films” and turns the song into a hysterical Blancmange disco jam, while “On The Day” is a hot air balloon of a song, only it’s the one in which The Wizard accidentally escapes Emerald City, leaving Dorothy behind. There are spaces between musical sections and more subdued vocals, which reiterate the somewhat under confident lyrics.

“Make Space” can hardly contain its own euphoria within the confines of the song, a quality that all the songs have, really, but here, it reaches its apex. The scratchy percussion that opens “Sometimes Your Friends” is soon revealed as guitar strings, before the song expands into yet another ridiculously good beat and some of that juicy, delicious bass. When the swears come in, it’s perfect and hilarious.

“Brighter End Of Dark” owes a lot to Chic’s “I Want Your Love” but is its own lovely animal, complete with synthesized electronic violins. Even though each song is at least four minutes long, you don’t want the album to end, but it does, with “It All Works All The Time,” the most on-the-verge-of-insanity song on Voyage: “If you want me to kill you/I would kill you/If you want me to love you/I wouldn’t know what to do.” It’s a fitting closer to an album of high-strung, danceable glory.

Even though De Lux reminds me of a lot of other bands, they still have an enticing, peculiar sound of their own. This band does not sound like they are tied down to one decade. This is not a retro retread. This is De Lux. You need them in your life.

Voyage was released on April 8 through Innovative Leisure.