Cleopatrick - Fake Moon

Four years on from the Canadian duo’s visceral debut ‘BUMMER’, second time around sees Cleopatrick take a mellower route to explore themes of insecurity, authority and nonconformity. In place of driving drumlines and thick, crunchy guitars are lo-fi electronica, stitched together structures, and soft falsetto. And as a reinvention, it almost does the trick. Melodic tracks supported by organic instrumentation – ‘BIG MACHINE, ‘CHEW’, ‘LOVE YOU – are the album’s high points, untangling their newly-adopted soundscape among what is otherwise a confusing, pixelated collection.

A sense of vulnerability comes to the fore, admittedly more through vibes than anything else, with the vocal feeling slightly muddied by over-production (‘BAD GUY’) and quite intense moments of background static (‘HAMMER’, ‘SOFTDRIVE’). Essentially, ‘FAKE MOON’ presents a myriad of ‘nearly’ moments. Generously, it could be described as a band bravely testing their boundaries; harshly, an over-worked yet under-developed selection of ideas. In reality, it’s somewhere in between those two positions; to paraphrase Neil Armstrong, it might be a giant leap for Cleopatrick, but they’re a few small steps away from landing it.