frequency13
Fun music. Witty lyrics. They also put on a great live show. Disco influenced tunes with David Byrne style vocals. Highly under-appreciated pop duo.
Favorite track: Keyboards Cause We're Black and White.
Pierre Conrad
Dancing for days... I love the stages the songs go through. It doesn't stick to the standard verse-chorus style. Also need to mention how smart/funny the lyrics are. "Music Snob" and "875 Dollars" are particular highlights.
Favorite track: Cause For Concern.
After establishing a sound on their debut Voyage and then establishing an
identity with the revelatory Generation, L.A. disco-not-disco duo De Lux took
a moment to re-center and come back leaner, sharper, clearer and deeper on
their new album More Disco Songs About Love. Now that co-founders Sean
Guerin and Isaac Franco know how to play and what to say, they’re ready to
just get lost in the music. As the band puts it: “We like to say Voyage was our
baby, Generation was our baby all grown up and More Disco Songs About Love
thinks growing up sucks and just wants to party smart.”
They started in 2013 with a happy accident called “Better At Making Time,”
the lead track of their 2014 debut Voyage and an unexpected practice-space
jam session that crystallized a sound, a philosophy and a future direction all
at once. In that sudden moment DeLux snapped into focus as an outfit matching
post-punk sentiment and the-sociopolitical-is-personal perspective to
joyfully indulgent analog synthesizer soundscapes and a deliriously
transportive musical joy. And the press was ready to take the ride, with the
Guardian calling Voyage “intricate, witty, inventive, dazzling in its detail” and
Billboard celebrating its “lush, eclectic dance music.”
On their 2015 sophomore album Generation—a title activating every sense of
the word—De Lux added a new almost-documentary aspect to their dance
music, delivering clearly personal stories of anxiety and hopeful aspiration
from the place where IRL L.A. exhaustion collides with a digital city that never
sleeps. (As Guerin sang: “All of these things that they put us through / I’m
writing it down / I’m writing it down.”) And they were growing up in other
ways, too: 2015 saw their first major festival appearance at Bonnaroo, where
they delivered the first of many stand-out big-show performances. Then in
2016, they made a hotly tipped Coachella debut and shared a bill with Arcade
Fire at New York City’s Panorama fest. And then at the end of that summer,
they started the very first experiments that would lead to their new album.
Like Voyage, More Disco Songs About Love starts with the song that made
everything clear: “875 Dollars,” a song (in part) about losing the place you’ve
always called home. From there it’s a stream-of-consciousness tour through
De Lux’s reality, from the family and friends who helped focus the sound of
the album to everyday L.A. experiences, including but not limited to elections,
evictions, even porn—although in the context you’d least expect, of course.
New York City dance-punk legend Sal P. of Liquid Liquid—who did a De Lux
remix on their first-ever release—takes featured vocals on the relentless
“Smarter Harder Darker” and the Pop Group’s maniacal Mark Stewart pushes
“Stratosphere Girl” into interstellar overdrive. (Plus Guerin’s mother Marie
helps out with some very French examination of crepe preferences on “Music
Snob,” mutant sibling to Generation’s surreal “Oh Man The Future.”)
And even though the title might seem like some kind of clever reference to
something, it’s really just as simple and direct as it seems. The disco is the
sound—in the most innovative way, of course—and the love is the sentiment:
“‘875’ is love for a house,” they say. “‘These Are Some Of The Things That I
Think About’ is love for thought. ‘Keyboards Cause We're Black and White’ is
our love for a friend. ‘Writing Music For Money, To Write More Music’ is love
for music—or money. It's all literal to us but we realize that it might not be for
others. We like the idea of giving listeners something to question and wonder
about. But there's love in there.”
An impeccably produced grab bag of disco-indebted melodies, snare-heavy hip-hop backbeats, and heady electronic textures. Bandcamp New & Notable Nov 22, 2023
