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Justice - (Cross) (2007)
BY MICHAEL TENZER I JULY 31, 2008
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IMAGE PROVIDED COURTESY OF ED BANGER RECORDS |
It's 1976 and I'm walking around a smoky circus tent just outside of Paris. The main attraction features burly muscle men sporting striped unitards and red baron mustaches. They balance champagne glasses on their massive biceps whilst they ride in slow circles on golden unicycles. The audience oohs and aahs.
It's actually 2008, and I was merely listening to the song "Valentine" on the French duo Justice's debut album (Cross). Two questions come to mind. Firstly, does France honestly export anything aside from Electronic music duos? No. No, it doesn't unless you count irreverence as an export. Secondly, how am I supposed to continue this review if I have no idea how to type out an actual Christian cross on my keyboard, the supposed "title" of the album? The answer to that is that I don't really care. (Cross) gets the point a-cross-. Puns are fun.
Funny, though, how those marvelous muscle men conjured up in "Valentine" are by no means a nice thematic bow wrapped around the overall tone of (Cross). The album is actually a swatch of similar patterns, with the occasional odd-ball design thrown in on the off chance that we'd want to paint our walls with it. And to a large degree, we do.
Most of the album is steeped in distorted synthesizer patterns that expand and contract against oily bass and thunder-hammer drums. When I say thunder-hammer, I mean it. Even though the drum beats are extremely simple, their impact shakes the very foundations of your speakers or headphones. Just listen to the sheer vibration of "Phantom, Pt. 2" and "Let There Be Light" for proof. The whole affair oozes this 1970s slime of disco decadence and the hair that came along with it. I'm guessing it is no mere coincidence that the album cover for (Cross) looks like the cover for a '70s greatest hits compilation.
Then there are the oddities. These are the songs that really make the album work as a whole. "D.A.N.C.E." had "single" written all over it since its inception in the twins minds of Justice - its playful vocals chanting acronym after
acronym in the midst of a sporadic and luminous string arrangement. "Tthhee Ppaarrttyy" is, well, it's something alright. It's one of those songs where you love the instrumentation so much that you try your hardest to disregard any kind of horrible vocal work that is placed in front of it. Such is the case with the "Tthhee Pppaarrttyy". The woman rapping in the song has this intolerable cockiness in her voice and you'll be hard pressed to get "Lets get his party started, right/ Lets get drunk and freaky fried" out of your head within the subsequent weeks of listening to it. And, of course, there is "Valentine" the crème de la crème of (Cross). A truly stand out song due to its low-key laziness compared with the high energy of the rest of the album—it acts as the distinctive meat in the (Cross) sandwich. And if it conjures up muscle men in unitards, well, I'm sold.
Inevitably, Justice will be compared to Daft Punk because they are:
A. French
B. A duo
C. Make electronic music with a funk and disco bent
It honestly doesn't matter, though. Justice will never be Daft Punk and Daft Punk will never be Justice. They have their own traits that are uniquely their own, and god forbid they draw on similar styles of music from decades past without having to pay for it pigeonhole style in the present. Give credit where it's due.
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