The Daily Spin, April 26
Capital Cities | In A Tidal Wave Of Mystery
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023.
Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here. Additionally, you can check out a list of my favorite song from each album right here.
If you want to suggest an album, good news! You can do so right here!
Album: In A Tidal Wave Of Mystery
Artist: Capital Cities
Link:
I was only half-paying attention when I queued up this album, and there’s nothing quite like being viscerally thrown ten years into the past with the first notes of a song you definitely didn’t think was the album opener.
As much as I would never want to go back to 2013, though, this album was definitely one of the high points of that year. This was one of my first experiences with indietronica as a genre, and I found myself in love at first sight. It’s those smooth synths, the rollicking keyboard, the acoustic influences that never quite fade away into the background fully.
The duo is at their best when they fall into a very St. Lucia-like synth run, as they do with ‘Center Stage’, touches of Daft Punk and Saint Motel working their way into the group’s debut album. Looking through the ‘similar artists’ feature on Spotify, it’s no wonder that I love this group and this album - with contemporaries like The Royal Concept, Passion Pit, Miami Horror, and Penguin Prison, it’s a better lineup than the 1927 Yankees.
The music does have a tendency to swing towards the cloying, a little overly sweet for my taste - never too bad, but there’s a little bit of a saccharine quality to it all - something that tends to be a bit of an issue in this genre, in my experience. If that’s the worst I have to say, though, I think that’s pretty good.
Rating: 8.6/10
Best Tracks: Kangaroo Court; Center Stage; Tell Me How To Live
Worst Tracks: Farrah Fawcett Hair