The Rapture
Pieces Of The People We Love

THE REVIEW

There are some albums that even before they are released are destined to be slapped around by critics from all over the world, both professional and not.
Regardless of their value, they will become scapegoats to mark the end of the alleged music scene of the moment, moral flaying posts on which to heap comments ranging from sardonic mockery to worse words.
"Pieces Of The People We Love" is one of those albums.

Many other albums share the same fate, such as Warlocks' "Surgery" or Air's "1000Hz Legend", but there are countless examples.
It often happens that after a chart-busting album, which draws the interest of both a small and large audience and becomes the flagship of a "new scene" (in almost ALL cases, this process is orchestrated and bears little resemblance to reality, but let's take it at face value), the following one, especially if it comes after three years of silence, will be considered 90% trash. The reasons are sometimes objectively musical, other times they depend on the health of the "new scene" of which the band was a flagbearer.

Since the so-called punk funk scene no longer appeals to many magazines and is waning (but beware, these are the moments when the best records come out), it is obvious that the second album by The Rapture is being massacred. In short, if God requires your son Isaac, providing a goat will do just as well, so why give up on the announced and ritual lynching of The Rapture?
Being atheist in this case helps.
I don't want to claim that "Pieces…" is some masterpiece, but if you're not very accustomed to the slightly disco(ring), suburban dancehall sounds of the '80s, or if you consider them corpses to be left in peace, the album has the merit of mixing them sometimes so well as to make them more than digestible.

This is the case with "Gotta Get Myself Into It", a monstrously catchy track destined to flood "alternative" dance halls. Forget the sharp guitars of "Echoes", semi-hung in favor of an almost entirely danceable approach and production style akin to Madonna's "Confessions".
Surely a cheeky choice, but in some instances, it works. Like in the tribal-DFA rhythm of the title track or in the semi-plagiarism of Gang Of Four with the funky guitar of "The Devil" or the deep bass of "Don Gon Do It". Strangely enough, the tracks with the highest guitar rate are the worst, between the pathetic ballad "Live In Sunshine" and the robot-rock of "The Sound", it's hard to choose which pain to die from.
In short, Saint Download, save us!