"High Wire" is probably the best overall track here, like Madonna's "Ray of Light" and begging for a remix or 50. The opening is infused with pops of chorused voices contrasted with whomp-whomp synths that are a change of pace when paired with a non-4/4 beat. Then the tune builds from verse to pre-chorus to chorus like a step-ladder: "Another night she spent right here drinking/Another lonely thought that she's still thinking."
When the finishing "Tempted" opens like a cut of Erasure's Chorus, there might be some worry Ford can't keep up the energy, but it builds into something pretty damn danceable before all is said and done.
Look, this ain't Bon Iver breaking your heart over and over again, obviously. This music is as ephemeral and plastic as you might imagine. But neither is it a facsimile of club-music past or an attempt to relive the '80s. Ctrl fits rather snugly into the growing musical excess that's becoming the soundtrack to the lives of kids having their first legal drink in the second decade of the 21st century.
And I'm pretty sure you don't have to have a pink mohawk to enjoy it.
Sam Pfeifle can be reached at sam_pfeifle@yahoo.com.
CTRL | Released by Dean Ford | March 13 | itsdeanford.com
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