It’s been peeling away for a while, but at this point the tense, calculated, economic guitar blasts of Blonde Redhead have completely disappeared — as if swept under the doormat with the rest of the ‘90s. The Blonde Redhead of 2010 is a predominantly electronic affair, submerged in murky, downbeat synth-pop. The band’s latest effort, Penny Sparkle, is occasionally moody to the point of boredom, its middle stretching out with overlong and ultimately rather limited compositions.
It’s easy to give Blonde Redhead points for trying, because so many bands of their age (looking at you, Quasi) would simply copy-and-paste the same prehistoric formula they first achieved notoriety for. They don’t get that complacent; it’d be fair to say Blonde Redhead sounds like a completely different group 20 years later, but they might be moving in the wrong direction. Penny Sparkle embraces the ‘80s melodrama of Depeche Mode, Cocteau Twins, and (a little more recent) Portishead to incredibly varying effect.
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Occasionally, the sound comes together quite well — the title track marries Kazu Makino’s always-gorgeous falsetto with a plodding, post-industrial drum machine, which gives the song a delectable public-access television ambience. But for the most part, Penny Sparkle is full of one-dimensional tracks that go on far longer than they should. The six-minute “Love or Prison” climbs up a shuttering guitar chug and then simply falls off the other end, a buildup with no payoff — but the buildup isn’t nearly interesting enough to justify that. The album has a decent amount of ideas, but it never hits its stride, and instead mires the listener in a series of empty vessels.
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