Gang Gang Dance: Saint Dymphna

Label: The Social Registry

Finally, Gang Gang Dance gives us the album that unites lovers of electro, rock, hip-hop and prog – no easy thing. Brooklyn’s Gang Gang Dance has always been an enigma, and that can be a good or bad thing, depending on your point of view. Their recording output has been uneven – and I don’t mean uneven in quality, as the band’s releases have uniformly been strong, but uneven in sound and aesthetic and often, frustratingly, uneven in availability (the great Revival of the Shittest has long been out of print, and the self-titled debut on Fusetron is always hard to get too). That air of mystery has given the band many admirers but it’s also kept them from reaching a larger audience, I suspect. Well, that won’t be the case with Gang Gang Dance’s superb new album, Saint Dymphna. It is easily their most pop-friendly album, with enough smooth beats and hooks to find their way into a few dance clubs in Williamsburg, but plenty of exotic arty touches, polyrhythms, and experimental sounds, as hard-core fans have come to expect. Gang Gang Dance have dipped their toes in pop and hip-hop and art rock before, but on Saint Dymphna they’ve jumped right into the waters with no apologies: “House Jam,” the track that should raise many eyebrows, could almost pass for 80s dance-pop; “Princes” is straight-up hip-hop, rapping and all; “Blue Nile” employs funky beats with proggy guitar riffs; and the gorgeous finale, “Dust,” with its heavy synths and beats, sounds like something right out of vintage 4AD. Saint Dymphna is an instant classic that should immediately be placed alongside the finest works of Animal Collective, Black Dice and Excepter. (James)