Death In Vegas - Trans-Love Energies

The first half of the 2000s was Death In Vegas’s time. Riding the tail end of big beat with a rock and roll swagger, they turned out track after track of infectious, danceable dirge. Their songs seemed universal but that might have been because they ended up soundtracking everything from jeans and mobile phone adverts to the film ‘Lost In Translation’.

But those times are long gone. ‘Trans-Love Energies’ is the group’s first studio album since 2004’s ‘Satan’s Circus’, and while it revisits band leader Richard Fearless’s roots in electronica it lacks the hooks of Death In Vegas’s most popular work.

There’s a lot of synth work and minimal beats going on; two tracks even throw in some shoegaze, seemingly just to remind you that this is the band that made the song ‘Girls’. However, the sound they are aiming for has recently been far more successfully captured by artists such as Cold Cave and Daniel Lopatin. They managed to take electronic influences and mould them into releases that were fresh and catchy. Death In Vegas’s attempt tastes more like weak tea dark wave.

Fearless’s vocals are unclear and at best sound like a timid David Bowie. He does put Austra’s Katie Stelmanis to good use as a guest vocalist on the airy disco-tinged lead single ‘Your Loft My Acid’. But at more than seven minutes long, it’s going to need a radio edit to pick up serious air time.

There are moments to nod along to and flourishes that hint at Death In Vegas’s glory days, but it seems unlikely that any of these songs will be picked up to back major advertising campaigns.

Some things should be left in the past, and perhaps the Death In Vegas name is one of them. ‘Trans-Love Energies’ feels like a more personal and small scale project for Fearless, it is not an album that can match the verve and bombast of his group at their peak.