Concentric Pleasures: Moby, Phoenix, Fever Ray and More

Phoenix are a pop band, plain and simple: a little bit Sloan, a little bit Fleetwood Mac and a little bit Daft Punk. At least, it feels like there's an unmistakably "electronic" element to the French band's records, even if it's just something about the goose-pimply detailing of their sound. (That could also describe the Fleetwood Mac influence, of course.) In any case, they take it back to the dance floor with a new set of "Lisztomania" remixes for Kitsune, the French label that recently released Phoenix's odd, appealing Kitsune Tabloid mix CD.

DFA's Holy Ghost! do a kind of chugging arpeggio thing that sounds an awfully lot like their own song "I Will Come Back." (Like their label mates Hercules & Love Affair and Black Meteoric Star, they clearly love old house and disco, but their take on it is way glossier.) LA's Classixx give blips their due on a spacy, slow-motion remix, and Manchester's Der Die Das dig into a gooey techno groove that reminds me the slightest bit of old Laurent Garnier. None of them are a patch on the original, nor for that matter upon Phoenix's recent album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, which is very good indeed, if you like that kind of thing. (By "that kind of thing," of course, I mean sunny-day singalong guitar pop that sounds like it's been squeezed from a tube full of rainbows and honey -- and who doesn't like that?)

In other recent indie/dance crossover releases, Strangelets (Supersoul Recordings' Xaver Naudascher and David Ducaruge) remix two of Sebastien Tellier's recent hits, gussying them up in tumbling, Italo-inspired arpeggios stretched to nearly eight minutes apiece. "Sexual Sportswear" is particularly good: brittle, pumping and moody. And, refreshingly, done without a trace of irony: these bleeps mean business.

Fever Ray's "Triangle Walks" is the new single from the Knife's Karin Dreijer-Andersson, and a diverse crew tests its malleable mettle. Tiga's is the oddball of the bunch, a low-slung electro number with booming 808s and a Neptunes infatuation. Elsewhere we find brooding downtempo (Ben Hoo), steely minimal techno (Spektre, Allez-Allez) and stately synth-pop (Tora Vintner, James Rutledge). Despite the stylistic range, they tend to bleed together under the weight of Dreijer-Andersson's almost overpoweringly processed vocals. Maybe that's why Allez-Allez's remix -- which all but erases them, stripping back the vocal track to a lone, repeated tone -- is one of the EP's most successful.

Finally, Moby has a new album out; following just a little over a year after Last Night, Wait for Me plots a considerably different course. While its predecessor was an uptempo celebration of New York's downtown dance legacy, the new one eases into a cozy, intimate vibe that's flush with guitars and vocals. Angelo Badalamenti, Beth Orton and maybe even Mazzy Star all serve as inspiration at different points across an album whose only real constant is its warmth. Taking a few cues from Joy Division (via Interpol), "Mistake" is fine, brooding guitar rock, while "Scream Pilots" sounds almost as though it might be a Plugz outtake from the Repo Man soundtrack. The album's best moments are its short, spontaneous instrumentals, fleeting moments when a musical idea flashes up in a smoke of tube glow and tape hiss, and is gone.