Flunk
Personal Stereo
Beatservice
Norway’s Flunk are in a sonically weird place. Most of their compositions are extended downbeat jams reveling in depression and the rote recycling of programmed beats that Dido was plying to commercial radio a decade ago, but vocalist Anje Vister is their key to the cutting edge, sounding like a cross between Bjork and Karin from The Knife. Is it good? Is it bad? It’s hard to say. It mostly hinges on the listener’s interest in electronic aloofness and rhythms you can’t dance to. The comatose lull of the music might draw in those looking for some relief in the narcotic comedown after a night clubbing, but I’d like to think that even those folks would still have enough synapses firing to get bored with the lack of evolution in music and lyrics on tracks like the title track – where Vister repeats ad nauseum this R.E.M. rip: “This one goes out to the one I love/ Coming to you on your personal stereo” – or “Change My Ways” in which she’s pretty insistent that we know she should “change [her] ways.” It’s not all bad though, the foggy analogue of “Heavenly” rolls in like Underworld’s classic “Born Slippy” under Vister’s charming daydream lyrics and “Two Icicles” mines the organic sound of a simple electric guitar to flesh out some ’60s-esque lovelorn pop standard songwriting. More songs in this vein would’ve helped quell the down-tempo, which is a feat every electronic band releasing albums in 2007 should already have in mind.
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