Today's Sounds: Divine Fits

Record:

Divine Fits, A Thing Called Divine Fits (Merge/Universal)

What an easy sell. Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade and Handsome Furs. Britt Daniel of Spoon. Sam Brown of New Bomb Turks (and a crapload of other bands). They’re nothing if not a power trio, and if you caught their show at Il Motore last month, you can’t argue with that.

The first two Divine Fits tunes to be revealed to the world this summer were the debut single, “My Love Is Real,” and “Would That Not Be Nice,” sung by Boeckner and Daniel, respectively. They sound a lot like what you’d think a mash-up of their bands would produce: electro-fried glam rock bones wrapped tightly in a tense funk gristle.

What you might not be expecting from the trio’s debut album is a weird robotic track like “The Salton Sea,” with its raw mecha-hammer pulse harkening back to the punk rock dawn of electro-pop. Even further afield is the album’s closing track “Neopolitans,” which sounds like prog rock stripped down to little more than dulcimers, sticks and skins. With its spectral synths and foreboding bottom, “For Your Heart” is fabulously moody and tense (I personally hope they make a super cheesy, ’80s-style narrative to accompany that one), and the upbeat groover “Like Ice Cream” is what it advertises: sumptuously cool.

Less tasty are the ballads, namely Boeckner’s “Civilian Stripes” and Daniel’s “Shivers” — I’m going to guess that this is the kind of material that used to drive Spencer Krug to drink whiskey in the afternoon.

But when the other nine tracks are so sharp, two blunt misfires are negligible. This record, in a word: killer.

Track:

Zodiac, “Come” (feat. Jesse Boykins III)

Zodiac is Jeremy Rose, the disgruntled former producer of the Weeknd. Apparently the boys are settled their differences (and potentially their accounts). Meanwhile, Zodiac releases his debut EP via Jacques Green’s Vase label on Sept. 24. Here’s a taste.

Video:

Le Révélateur, “Data Daze”

Roger Tellier-Craig (of Pas Chic Chic, and the extended godspeed family) follows up his Révélateur LP Fictions with a cassette called Horizon Fears, being released by NNA Tapes. Step into a neon remix of a Dario Argento soundtrack here: