The staccato synths, bombastic 80s drums and that sax solo: Midnight City is unquestionably one of 2011’s best tracks. A sensational swirl of high-production values and lo-fi, shoe-gazing vocals, I’ve probably heard it three times a day for the past month thanks to 6Music’s unerring patronage to a tune that refuses to become tedious.
And yet the album from which Midnight City is taken, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, is perhaps the most overrated album of the year. A 22 track double opus, lasting 74 minutes, it’s earned the much-coveted Best New Music title on Pitchfork, scoring a ‘zero room for buzz growth’ 9.1 in the process.
Having played it yesterday for the first time, I just can’t see it. Midnight City is the album’s undoubted stand out, while the second side’s Steve McQueen is also clearly a triumph of epic excess, a vast soundscape that channels main man Anthony Gonzalez’s love of synth pop and big drums. But otherwise, this is an overly long record, chock full of too many tunes that fail to scale the heights of the two previously mentioned tracks. The whole record is overcast by a sense of Gonzalez attempting to do something on a huge scale, while the tracks themselves suffer. Think Be Here Now for the hipster generation.
Of course, this is a subjective opinion, but an unscientific casting around of fellow lovers of such new music suggests I’m not on my own. There seems to be a feeling that this album has been given a huge amount of buzz owing to Gonzalez’s strong relationship with Pitchfork, rather than being looked at on its own merits.
I’ll definitely be including Midnight City in my ten best tracks of 2011. But when it comes to albums of the year, this doesn’t come close. In all (and sorry to come over all Carles and Hipster Runoff here), Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming feels like a victory for buzz over quality. It’s an issue that’s becoming ever more concerning (see Cults, Girls and Lana Del Ray) and one which will doubtless continue into 2012 and beyond.
Joe Minihane 