Exclamation marks don’t have a clean record in recent pop history. The resolutely entertaining efforts of The Go! Team, Los Campesinos! and !!! are scarcely able to compensate for Hadouken! and Panic! at the Disco’s sullying of this perennial tool of punctuation. All too often the exclamation mark is used as a cheap signifier for hipster flippancy, and given Lightspeed Champion’s status as one-time hipster-in-chief, the exclamation mark in the middle of Life Is Sweet! Nice To Meet You made me brace myself for an unwelcome torrent of quirkiness.
However, halfway through the first track, it becomes clear that the album’s chirpy title is an ironic disguise for what is a surprisingly grandiose and ambitious work. Produced by Ben Allen, who worked on Merriweather Post Pavilion, LS!NMY’s orchestral arrangements mark a clear departure from Dev Hynes’ last country-influenced offering. Piano and strings often accompany 70s glam rhythms and guitar solos, a combination which is effective on ‘Madame Van Damme’ and indie-disco stomper ‘Marlene’.
But ultimately, it’s the album’s vaulting ambition which is its greatest shortcoming. In ‘Faculty of Fears’ and ‘Middle of the Dark’ the melodies just aren’t good enough to carry off the unorthodox rhythms and arrangements. At over fifty minutes long the whole thing is too long, with two pointless intermissions and even a piano étude. More intractable problems also remain. The most notable of these is Hynes’ voice, which sounds like a wobbly mixture of Kele Okereke and Conor Oberst, but fails to deliver the lyrical deftness of touch possessed by either man.
It’s hard not to be impressed by what this album tries to achieve, even if it doesn’t achieve it. Hynes seems to aim at something more serious than his previous output, which, though hip has always been patchy. Even with a malcontented lyrical theme, the record is, for better or for worse, as exuberant as the title’s exclamation mark suggests.
Three stars
