CD Reviews

Justice

† | Vice

By ANDREW GRAHAM | August 20, 2007

3.5 Stars

Vice like the magazine or Vice like Miami? That’s the question. And the answer — the heavily buzzed debut from the hip French duo Justice: † or the “Cross Album” — can be addressed only through stream-of-free-associative consciousness tweaked by an oversurfed web. Daft Punk. CSS. Ratatat. Crystal Method. Battles. Go! Team. Three 6 Mafia. MySpace. Ed Banger. Daft Punk’s manager’s record label. Mussorgsky. John Carpenter. Goblin. Miami Vice magazine. Hipster dance pop. DFA 1979. iTunes single of the week. And a line from Elvis: “That’s what makes it all right.” Of course, the King was talking about incest, but if an album like this ain’t all right, then pop’s all wrong. Rough-edged and overdriven in the right places, super-slick as their Reagan-era new-wave touchstones elsewhere, this pomo-funk concoction from Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspard Augé is like a French kiss from Sonny Crockett. The suave pastel T-shirt soothes, the shoulder pads under the white linen sportcoat gently caress, and the free-wheeling five o’clock shadow keeps things just rough enough for love.

Related: Vowel free, The French are coming, Reaching climax, More

Topics: CD Reviews , Elvis Presley, Entertainment, Music, More

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