Over the past few weeks, apparently from nowhere, Gotye (pronounced ‘Gautillier’), the stage name of Belgian born Australian experimentalist musician Wouter De Backer, has stealthily climbed the UK charts with his song ‘Somebody I Used to Know’, the lead single from Making Mirrors. Despite the success of the single, the success of this, his third album, is hindered by two simply unavoidable problems. The first of these being the wide range of differing styles which the album contains, the second being the brilliance of that flagship single, ‘Somebody I Used to Know’.
You might be forgiven for thinking that a good song would be to the benefit of an album as a whole, but this is certainly not the case in this instance. The album features songs ranging from the upbeat Motown-inspired ‘I Feel Better’ to the slower, electronic sounds of ‘State of the Art’, which is apparently a song about pipe organs. Whilst experimentalism of this kind should be encouraged, the disparate styles on display on Making Mirrors means that the album exhibits a severe lack of coherence with it sometimes being difficult to believe that you are still listening to the same artist from song to song.
If, then, there is no coherence, which there isn’t, the album must rely on the strength of its individual songs for its success, and this is where the colossus that is ‘Somebody I Used to Know’ really shoots its parent in the foot. The song contains its own compelling storyline of lost love and everything it sets out to achieve is achieved. Although the other songs on the album are by no means poor – ‘Eyes Wide Upon’, ‘Save Me’ and ‘Bronte’ are all well worth a listen – they are nowhere near the standard of ‘Somebody I Used to Know’, to the extent that the listener cannot help but be left wondering why they should bother with them at all.
3 STARS
