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Icky Blossoms prefer their retro-styled dance music deep-fried and nasty. “Heat Lightning” kicks off their homonymous debut album with all the right moves: blissfully overlapping vocal harmonies, skittering programmed rhythms, and synth-bass so thick, it could crush a small kitten. Similar carnal pleasures are littered throughout, including “Cycle,” a trippy come-down headphone jam built on synths that blare through the crowded mix like a truck-stop hand dryer. Icky Blossoms are primarily concerned with stroking your naughtiest pleasure zones, often at the expense of, ya know, singing in tune: the grating, off-key vocals on “I Am” sound like they were recorded via tape recorder in traffic between coke bumps. And no matter how you slice it, some of these tracks are laughably stupid, particularly the monotone “Sex to the Devil,” which recalls a mix between an atrocious “Vogue” cover and an approximation of “runway music” from an SNL sketch. There just isn’t much personality on display here: Icky Blossoms strive for in-your-face decadence, but most of the time, they sound like every other anonymous dance-pop act on the planet. Originality might not matter when you’re shitfaced under the strobe lights, but a lack thereof can be embarrassing the morning after.
