Mini Moog's, Korg keyboards, and that mad thing that made Cher's voice go all wobbly on 'Believe… they have all made a come back recently and nowhere more so than in the eternally retro world of indie pop. Never the most innovatory of ensembles, it will come as no surprise then that Hefner have opted for an all out analogue attack on their fifth studio album.
On the evidence of Dead Media there are two key problems with this approach. Firstly, when Super Furry Animals, Beck and Les Rhythmes Digitales go all analogue electro on us there is a sense that the bleeps and blips they generate are chosen to fit in with a carefully conceived song aesthetic.
Not so, it would appear, in Hefner's home studio. Never before have a band sounded more like a pack of Feltham escapees let loose in the Dixon's keyboard department. Some of the sounds here are quite funny, and not all of them sound completely out of place. However, after fifteen songs you just wish the Dixon's manager would pull the plug and slap them with a life ban from his store.
As a result of the seemingly random, 'five-year-old-in-a-sweet-shop' nature of many of 'Dead Media's' arrangements, much of this album simply winds up sounding like a rather hackneyed gimmick being used to save some distinctly ordinary VIth form pop songs from certain death. Which, to be honest, is not too far from the truth.
Most of 'Dead Media' resembles a third rate Pulp, Denim or Babybird - steeped in tales of sexual disappointment in bedsit land but without the considerable charm, warmth and wit of the aforementioned bands. Instead, we get the depressingly stupid forthcoming single 'Trouble Kid' which may be being ironic, but I'd prefer not to go back and find out, and the similarly twee and annoying 'Peppermint Taste'. The final lyrical refrain of former single 'Alan Bean' ("ever felt like giving up/ we felt like giving up") whilst being a dangerous thought to plant into the mind of the listener just six songs in, does seem to sum up the general mood rather nicely.
On a couple of occasions Hefner come close to hitting the mark. When the 'Angels Play Their Drum Machines' sounds like a prototype for how the rest of the album should, nicely melding bittersweet pop melody with a sharp, punchy analogue backing track. And later the 'King Of Summer' is a mildly effective old style indie rocker. Such moments are few and far between however, thus rendering the album's title uncomfortably and depressingly prophetic.
