Write Ups: Woman — Justice
My initial interest in dance music happened during the awkward, pubescent years between fourteen and eighteen. Electronica, as I first snobbishly called it, was a world all on its own — exotic and weird, a far cry from the more traditional classic rock and punk genres I grew up with. 2007 was a specifically banner year; out of which came, to my mind, the four ambassadors of the French electronic scene: Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo of Daft Punk, and Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay of Justice. Of the treasures that year gave us (e.g. Mr. Oizo’s Transexual, Kavinsky’s 1986), Daft Punk’s Alive 2007 and Justice’s Cross were the ones that whipped a seventeen-year-old Whittierite out across the Atlantic into this new digital world of sampling, “Blog House,” four-on-the-floor, and sequenced drum machines. It was one of the few stupidly dreamy love affairs I’ve ever had in my life.
Enter: Woman, Augé and de Rosnay’s latest album, released on Ed Banger Records and Because Music. Warning signs of the over-idolizing a new project arrived on a rarely cold, mid-July morning in Amsterdam when I fell on “Safe and Sound,” the first released single from the album. The initial flashback endeared: Young-Joe deep inside old Sony headphones, eyes closed, dancing around the bedroom at 3 AM. From one song alone, I knew it to be real again: the magic once felt almost a decade ago.
Therein lies the inherent problem of over-sensationalizing Woman. Instances like this make it easy to fall victim to the surrounding aura of a new record. The idea of trying so hard to like something as though a courteous free pass is granted despite underlying levels of shit — Disclosure’s Caracal, or Daft Punk’s production on The Weeknd’s “Starboy,” for instance.
DJ Crudlr, from KBeach Radio’s Beyond the Spectrum and Filthy Weird, proclaimed reasons of discontent toward the new Justice material, saying that the aesthetic choice made by the duo — instrumental throwbacks to the eighties with a vaguely disco/electro feel —profiled yet another letdown of their own sound (his words), that maybe they played down their unique brand of youthful, maniacal order in favor for the more fashionable nostalgia-grab currently happening on many music scenes today (my words). His views are not unwarranted, either. Audio, Visual, Disco. (2011) was Justice’s proverbial Kingdom of the Crystal Skull — the existence of which I often regret acknowledging. And so I find myself listening to Justice’s latest while straining my critical eye for the sake of objectivity.
First, the drudgery. Musically, “Fire” is Justice’s over-stepping their straight-forward eighties influence. The two keyboard tracks — one distractingly reminiscent of Supertramp’s Breakfast in America (1979) album, the other sounding like a broken Bachian chamber ensemble (Also problematic in “Heavy Metal”)— saturate the song’s voice performance. Besides being a molly-fueled Jane Fonda fitness tape, “Chorus” evokes a sort of cosmic wonderment that forces me to further speculate its placement within the playlist. And then there’s “Love S.O.S.” I got a ten-spot down that says, by year’s end, Coca-Cola is going to round up a group of A- and B-level celebrities in a studio to sing “Love S.O.S.” as a last-ditch attempt to convince the public that there’s still hope for 2017. For an album that borders on kitsch, “Love S.O.S.” reaches peak Warhol with that tornado siren cascading in the background.
Make no mistake, there are truly unbelievable moments happening in Justice’s latest. “Safe and Sound” was and still is the perfect single to lead-off the album’s hype. The repetitive hook driving the song comes full circle when you add the searing addition of the London Contemporary Orchestra. A slap-bass performance on par with Flea’s “Around the World”, pistol-fire synth strings in the bridge, finger-snaps behind the kick drums— it’s not hard to feel a serenity last felt during the release of their seminal hit, “D.A.N.C.E.” The difference here is that there is a refreshing grandiosity used to accentuate the feel of the song, rather than weigh it down like in “Love S.O.S.” and “Chorus.” Augé and de Rosnay refuse to hold back on “Alakazam!,” either.
Between the years 1914 and 1915, English composer Gustav Holst wrote “Jupiter, The Bringer of Jollity” and “Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age.” If Holst’s intention was to grant us, the audience, insight to the very nature of our two largest planets, Augé and de Rosnay’s “Alakazam!” is the light speed that propels us through the 401,592,178 mile-long gap of space in between. The gallant orchestral elements and roaring synths that echo Rad Omen’s “Rad Anthem” (2010) could shake any planetarium light show. The breakout lyric track of the album, however, is the pro-sex declaration of self-love, “Randy.”
It’s easy to slip into the spitfire down-beat of “Randy.” Both it and the vocals come together in a more playful and sexy mood— less Gesaffelstein’s “Pursuit,” more Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf.” The real money shot of the song, though, is in its innuendo-driven lyrics encouraging the song’s protagonist, Randy. The lyrics speak to the hesitant in all of us, celebrating the pleasantries of sexuality. “Get up and shake it up
It’s time that you listen up and hear the call
There at the water but at night you’re on fire
Back against the wall.
Don’t stop, try to make your mark
And make your mind up
Don’t stop, work it out and try to make it
Randy, get yourself together
Got to get it up to make it better
Randy, you don’t have to suffer
Step outside and find yourself a lover”
We all know, or have met, a Randy at some point in our lives. One who can’t quite come to their own confidence, and is quick to doubt themselves in the face of romance. Approaching the song as a straightforward, touchy-feely menagerie of eros garners all the gooeyness of, say, the teenagers-at-summer-camp trope. Considering the nature of the song, however, one should be comfortable reading the whole song as one long, pulsating double-entendre.
What is certain about Woman is Justice’s ability to bring the magic back in a significant, eye-catching way. To write the album off as a formulation that tries so hard to fit within the nostalgic sub-script of our current musical moment would be to miss a crucial point about what the album is. It’s not some large electronic political statement. With all the imperfections laced throughout the album, it’s still not the average contemporary throwback record. It’s not really a faithful dance record, but it’s not even a pop record either. And I think that’s the point. This is that ‘electronica’ snobbishly fawned over back in 2007. It is certainly not the great unifier of the masses this year, and it surrenders any effort to surpass Justice’s first album as well as their live projects. The true feat of Woman are the few, tiny elements within the record; subtle glimpses of magic that help reassert Augé and de Rosnay’s place as pantheonic figures of their home nation’s sound.
- Joe Cannon
Back at this writing thing
