CD Reviews

Lindtsrøm

Where You Go I Go Too | Smalltown Supersound

By SAM UBL | August 12, 2008

3.5 Stars

Easy review: three tracks, each between 10 and 29 minutes, every moment electric. Correct, but the better story is how the new album from Norwegian dance-music avatar Lindstrøm comes across humble and restrained despite its opulent dimensions. As the first non-shitty half-hour-long song of the millennium, the title track and centerpiece marks a milestone of sorts, but you wouldn’t know it from casual listening. That’s because Lindtsrøm’s liquified Scando-Med-Italo-Beardo cuisine brims with campy, catchy, whimsical delights. By piling layer upon layer in a kind of space-disco palimpsest, he produces an æthereal ebb and flow that offers a comfortable ride without ever becoming background music. Positively slight at just 10 minutes, the palpitating “Grand Ideas” pivots on a simple melodic theme, but Lindstrøm never pulls the knot, opting instead to let the Hoover-ized synth refrain slowly tighten its own stranglehold. The track ends right around when “The Long Way Home” really gets going. Toggling effortlessly between island kitsch and antiseptic disco, the album’s third and best try spins a viciously tight web that flirts with a triumphant climax but finishes instead in groove and loud ringing — which is oddly appropriate for this conquest statement. Clearly fond of cheeseball riffs and epic narrative, Lindstrøm nevertheless recognizes the folly of virtuosity. Wiser than heroic, he’s mock-quixotic.

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