NB: Continuing the cavalcade of album reviews today, I post a new piece from a new contributor here at the blog, Steve Crowley. You may know who he is. You might not on the other hand. That being said, I’m sure that he can tell you who he is as soon as he gets blog privileges.

While Bodysongs is technically Born Gold’s debut release, these guys are no newbies to the electronic music scene. In 2009 under the name Gobble Gobble, the Canadian outfit released an album called Neon Graveyard and a number of subsequent singles and EPs before the big name change earlier this year. From first to latest release, this band’s evolution has been remarkably systematic with each release adding a new ingredient or two to the mix. Neon Graveyard is a noisy, psyched out lo-fi record with frenetic drum machine loops. Early versions of Bodysongs tracks can be found here, but by the time they’ve been tightened up and polished, the final product is glitchy, feel-good dance pop. I’m not exactly sure how they managed to make that progression seem so natural, but they do and it makes sense. Bodysongs’ style differs just enough from what the band used to be to warrant a name change. Born Gold is a new and different project for these guys, whose sound is exactly how it you might imagine it—fresh and sparkly.

Bodysongs is sonically pleasant and accessible. The album strikes an appropriate balance between fuzzy bleep bloops and glitchy electronic percussion to produce something consistent and smooth. Front man Cecil Frena’s voice is frequently and subtly altered with pitch bends and effects, but they take nothing away from how honest and powerful his delivery is. The approach to style and structure of each song seems formulaic and works here to give the album a sense of completeness. Often when I’m faced with electro-pop music, whether it’s top 40 artists or knob turning hipsters, I find it difficult to stick it out beyond that one song I really care to hear. Bodysongs is not one of those albums. There are a couple of tracks that could stand out as singles, but it’s really an album that should exist as a whole unit.

Upon pressing play I found myself bobbing my head immediately. On a very basic level, that’s what Bodysongs is all about—body movement. Unfortunately, the Born Gold show in Iowa City last month slipped past my radar, but it I would have been very interested to see how the band was physically engaged with their own music because this album is so fixated with the question of what to do with your body while you have it. This sounds morbid and well, it kind of is. With song titles like “End of Days”, “Decimate Everything”, and “Alabaster Bodyworlds”, mortality and decay are central themes here. In the buzzy, pulsating seventh track “Wrinklecarver”, Frena feels that, “we’re old as emeralds” and worries about losing his youthful body as he cries, “I don’t wanna to live without it/I don’t wanna think about it.”

The more I listen to Bodysongs the more anxious I get. I find myself in some serious self-reflection as I get deeper and deeper into the record until all of a sudden my introspective daze is broken when the final track “Early Birthday” abruptly cuts off mid-chorus. I feel slightly lame making a “life is like x…” metaphor, but much like life—this album is shorter than you want it to be (just under 29 minutes) and ends at an inconvenient time. Frena encourages the listener to get introspective and “think about it” a minute (even if you don’t wanna), but doesn’t exactly want you to dwell on your own mortality. Rather he simply asks you to be aware of it while you’re out dancing and living your fucking life to the fullest.