Toronto rock duo Death From Above 1979 made a fantastic album 10 years ago that utilized loud dynamics with great riffs and booming choruses. This is a combination that has resulted in many terrible albums, but what made 2004’s You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine different is that it was not a heartless slab of bar rock. In fact, critics we’re actually tripping over themselves to put this band and their sound in a box. Was it noise rock? Was it dance-punk? Quite frankly, both tags felt lazy. Dance-punk was en vogue in 2004 and the idea of Death From Above 1979 as a noise group stemmed from the idea that they were loud and had the same bass-and-drum set up.
After 10 years, it’s still an easier task to define Death From Above 1979’s with an ear than with words. This is pertinent because Sebastien Granger and Jesse Keeler have finally brought their instruments and elephant trunk caricatures back for a sophomore album. The good news is that the follow-up, The Physical World, sounds like Death From Above 1979, albeit with some tact. The difference between The Physical World and You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine is that this time around, the Canadian duo are trying to make rock songs, whereas the debut was two loud guys that seemed to bash out insanely catchy hooks. The result is a sophomore album that isn’t nearly as magical as the debut, which is the worst thing to be said about The Physical World.
A Death From Above 1979 album in 2014 feels wrong, considering that what made the band so endearing was their particular juvenility. The Physical World shows an incarnation of a duo shedding their sugary sweet qualities while not making an album that could be read as anything close to mature. Yet there is this sense that it all sounds aged, which overshadows a handful of great songs on this album, despite all of the hallmarks of You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine showing up. “Virgins” is a punishing groove that recalls the band’s horndog antics in a way more creative than anything Arctic Monkeys did last year. “Government Trash” is frenetic enough to fit perfectly on their debut album. “Gemini” is simultaneously the most cornball pop song the two have released and sounds more like Lightning Bolt than any of the songs on You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine.
Still, The Physical World falls flat in a few spots. The album’s biggest bummer is its opener, the appropriately titled “Cheap Talk”, with a refrain of “what he said/what she said/it doesn’t matter in the end,” that sounds lazy by the extremely low standards set by rock lyrics. Furthermore, the middle of The Physical World is hit or miss enough to bog down any momentum that the album picks up from standout tracks “Right On! Frankenstein!” and “Virgins”. This continues throughout the album, which never truly gets going until its conclusion. As such, The Physical World is a hollow shell. All that being said, Death From Above 1979 have passed the reunion album test with flying colors. It is a surprise that the duo had this many good songs left in them.
Rating: 3.5/5