Carpark North
All Things To All People

THE REVIEW

These Danes are strong.

No one doubts that they generally make good music. I think of Kashmir and the fantastic 'Zitilites'. But I also think of seemingly more sugary stuff, yet always of notable substance (Saybia, who started off great, or Grand Avenue).

These young men with a decidedly ridiculous and therefore fascinating name, now on their second album (and from the first, they recover some tracks here in the Italian version), are mostly known for that immediately powerful electro-punk track Human, accompanied by a phenomenal video, among the best in recent years, full of ridiculously adolescent kids confined and shaken in a Scandinavian and wooden middle school (?). And it's a track that might be simple but striking. I've even found myself dancing to it in some club, always unsure of what to do in those seconds of silence and vocoder that open the second chorus (which starts, just to not be too predictable, with a brief and commendable delay). In short: well done.

As for the rest of the album: pretty good. There’s good stuff, of pleasant level, for the ability to find catchy riffs and direct melodies (Transparent & Glasslike, retrieved from the first album, above all), for the skill in mixing bases and passages that are almost always very eighties with walls of guitars powerfully current, even nu-metal in certain instances (see the overly stretched The Beasts). But there's also a lot of bland stuff. I think of some banal tracks that recall (to those who, lucky them, had forgotten them) The Rasmus (Berlin, Run, Song About Us), I think of some eighties inserts that are a bit cloying, considering that with those sounds, the Danish youngsters know how to craft well-refined songs (Best Day).

A certain metropolitan and smoky atmosphere is felt in the pleasant and slower Fireworks; Newborn is saved by those whip cracks of eighties beats that intertwine well with the guitar riffs; Heart of Me closes a little between Kashmir and Saybia (and Coldplay?), very airy, suspended. The voice is very appreciable, as it knows how to handle the various registers quite well (but never like mister Saybia and mister Kashmir).

The whole, I would say, does not fully convince, but the experimental spirit needs to be promoted, the care of the sounds as well, and as long as they make tracks like Human: long live Carpark North.