The Breakdown
USER have been together around six years and ‘Mira Imposta’ is their third album. Their oeuvre is a fascinating mix of throbbing Euro disco with pure pop sensibilities and an electronic snakiness that shimmers and slithers through the ears like a delicious unguent. And in this album, there is a heart of brooding gothic darkness that permeates every note: rich, luscious and satisfying. It’s Lynchian in tone – all red velvet lounges in the early hours of the morning, an absinthe-infused neon-lit fugue and a dreamscape that is slightly twisted and dissonant. All wrapped up with ethereal bittersweet melodies.
According to the band,
Pronounced ‘mirror’ ‘imposter’, USER’s 3rd album is a challenge to authenticity in the modern world.
Encapsulated in the formative and twisted music references in the art design, the album explores the things that we destroy and rebuild, the things that we collect and discard, and ultimately the things that we project to the world and our place in their reflection.
Embedded in this is an artistic experimentation and creativity – there are, for example, a range of slightly adjusted album covers. The band explains:
Paying homage to the albums that inspired them, in true USER style the band has upcycled, reused and remade each of the 150 individual and unique album covers.
…each album cover features one of the band member’s most cherished albums which has been reversed, re-touched & re-imagined creating a new one off USER cover.
These will be exclusively available in vinyl at the band’s gigs.
Opening track ‘White Wine Ain’t So Bad’ is a hazy fugue of barely contained psychedelia as if the subject matter of the title had been indulged in volume.
‘Two Way Radio’ is a pulse-quickening high stepping melodic blast with a bubble gum pop chorus imbued with a brazen Blondie-like swaggering delivery and a psychedelic video:
‘Colour Once A Reminiscent Delight’ mixes spoken cold and observant vocals that have an Antarctic chill with soft repetitive melody and shards of synths stabbing over the top. The motorok beat maintains a steady hypnotic heartbeat. ‘No Shame No Guilt’ is another steady paced thrum with chanty vocals and an ominous drone that fuzzes over the top, wild guitars etching contrails across the sky.
Foghorn sounds in the mist introduce ‘Feel The Pain’ with the return of a Bowie vocal delivery and the stature of a Visage/Ultravox electronica. This is a slow burning fuse that simmers with a dreamy ethereal intensity. ‘Eldorado’ is twitchy and glitchy, picking up the pace with Gibbs’s vocals to the fore over the tripping trot and a chorus that, fittingly, has a flamingo twirl, fingers clicking and eyes blazing as the sound spins around, skirts billowing – yet referencing the 1920s Berlin club of the same name.
‘Loneliness’ has a sonorous Bowiesque male vocals delivered over a restless throbbing arpeggiated thrum that pulses like blood in the veins. It’s the darkest of pop that hangs from the belfries, simmering and brooding, enigmatic as Gibbs’s vocals float through the firmament.
‘You Know’ is a spacey techno kaleidoscope with a throbbing danceable thrum with elements of The Beloved in its genetic makeup and a touch of Cabaret Voltaire with its hypnotic electro blast.
Closing movement ‘Death From Below’ enters with a motorik beat and a fuzzy wall of guitars and a prowling bass before singer Lisa Gibbs’s soft ethereal vocals float over the top, ominous male vocals whispering in the either. There is an echo of the obscure UK band Mono (not to be confused with the Japanese band of the same time nor the Irish one linked to The Cranberries) with the sixties influences and melody laden vocals. USER manage to layer a panoply of noises and sounds that weave throughout the track, mysterious and enigmatic.
‘Mira Imposta’ is at times an experimental anarchical album with so many immersive layers and complex sounds, and yet throughout there is a hyperkinetic disco thrum and pop sensibility that makes it a thoroughly satisfying whole and a style all of its own.
USER is Lisa Gibbs, Frank Galgano, Andrew Nunns and Daryl Bradie.
The album is out now and you can catch USER live tonight in Melbourne and at a number of venues throughput Australia:
Melbourne (Old Bar – 11 April), Adelaide (Exeter Hotel – 26 April), Sydney (Moshpit – 2 May), Canberra (Smith’s Alternative – 3 May) and regional Victoria.
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