Adult.

Why Bother?

Thrill Jockey

originally published April 4, 2007

The Detroit duo Adult. must've sent out promo copies of its new album, Why Bother? with some trepidation. After all, it's a record whose elements all scream electroclash - analog drum machines, distorted keyboard tones, cold female vocals speak-singing repetitious and nebulously hostile lyrics - and electroclash is dead. Or it's at least wholly disgraced; it certainly lives on in acts that have branched out from that basic formula into lush disco, pastoral reveries or straight industrial, but electroclash's conscious embrace of faddishness and pretensions to commercialism made it necessarily disposable, and taking on its signifiers is viewed as gauche enough to discredit anyone.

Electroclash gets a bad rap, but unfortunately, Adult. doesn't do anything here to redeem it. The lyrics could pass for Nine Inch Nails - one song, "Herd Me," goes "Yes, there's safety in your herd, but what if it's mad / A mad mad mad mad man might say... / 'Just follow me down, down to doomsday" - and Nicola Kuperus' vocal delivery could be interesting if it weren't wedded to these over-the-top sentiments.

It's likely Adult. intends its music to stand alongside electronic noise acts, especially Wolf Eyes, who seem to get a free pass by labeling themselves "experimental." But the band can't suppress its pop elements, as songs like "I Feel Worse When I'm With You" outline an energetic drive even as they annoy. It would be interesting to see Adult. follow its peers down the path towards more emotional complexity and textural openness, but here the duo sticks with its ersatz psychosis, to its detriment.

Michael Barthel

Adult. is playing at the EARL in Atlanta on Thursday, Apr. 12.