[rating=3.00]
Röyksopp has carved out a lovely niche for itself, creating music that is at once accessible to clubbers and simple music aficionados alike. Past albums have been studies in contrast, on the one hand filled with catchy, dance-oriented songs with hooks one can’t get out of one’s head, such as Melody A.M.’s “So Easy” or The Understanding’s “Only this Moment” or the hauntingly beautiful “What Else is There?” At the same time, those albums also carried more down-tempo songs, ambient musings that served as functional, if not extraordinary, background ambience for a quiet evening of cocktails and conversation.
Their new album, Senior, essentially eliminates the upbeat, focusing instead on the duo’s more ambient explorations. It is meant as a complement to its predecessor, the upbeat Junior, and in that sense it serves wonderfully. However, listened to on its own, it seems somehow lacking the Röyksopp energy. Part of this could simply be that previous Röyksopp albums took one on a musical rollercoaster, bouncing in and out of energy levels in a pleasantly disconcerting fashion. On this album, with few relatively minor exceptions (“Tricky Two” and, arguably, “The Drug”), the tracks stay resolutely down-tempo – and even the above-noted exceptions do not get particularly upbeat. (Interesting side note: the video for “The Drug” is macabre and bizarre, in a compelling style that lends energy to the music. It is definitely worth a watch.)
None of this is intended to suggest Senior is a bad album. To the contrary, it has some lovely atmospheric songs, pieces that would not be out of place in Air’s Talkie Walkie canon (and would fit just as well in a melancholy film like Lost in Translation). They strike this writer as perfect complement to a dark walk on a cold Nordic night – lost in one’s thoughts, the stars twinkling overhead, the air almost painfully chilly. Given that, this could be Röyksopp’s best effort to date at conveying the Norwegian landscape in aural terms.
