Electric Guest deserve praise for completely wrong-footing expectations. Comprised of Asa Taccone and Matthew Compton, the LA duo chose the name because it had stuck with Taccone since the day someone told him that he was simply ‘an electric guest of the universe’. This came after he had been kicked out of high school, and those are the kind of words that can make someone feel small, but that phrase stuck with him; hence, the name of the band. The album’s title is the Italian for ‘world’, and these things, added to the album artwork, suggest that their debut LP should by all rights be a psychedelic affair. It most definitely is not.
The duo got Brian Burton (AKA Danger Mouse) on production duties for the album, so its sound is as punchy as one would expect. This goes a long way towards ensuring that Mondo has the desired impact. It can most accurately be summed up by the epic album centrepiece Troubleman, which combines a number of different styles to create something intoxicating, but the nine-minute song is merely the tip of the iceberg.
Most importantly, it doesn’t overshadow the rest of the ten-track collection. What we get on Mondo is a mixture of funk, Motown and straight-up indie-pop; one which sets the bar with the laid-back album opener Holes (which marries some buzzing bass to huge reverb-soaked drums, and throws a magnificent stuttering keyboard hook on the top) and rather impressively maintaining that same level of quality throughout, with an absolute ton of killer hooks thrown in. The Bait is another album highlight, containing an unstoppable chorus and an audible swagger that seems to indicate just how confident its creators are.
The insanely catchy, unpredictable Awake starts as a bass-and-handclaps-laden pop song but undergoes a complete transformation around three minutes in before wrapping things up with an unexpected coda. More confidence; it’s practically everywhere, but they have every right to be confident. This Head I Hold was a fantastic single, its upbeat pop stylings immediately marking the duo out as a going concern, and in album context, it goes off like a firecracker.
At times, one may wonder if Mondo is indeed Electric Guest’s debut; very few bands of this ilk are imbued with supreme confidence so early in their career, but they have clearly honed their craft, something which extends to how the album is structured. American Daydream has a tough job in following Troubleman and setting up the summery album closer Control, but it does an outstanding job. Less confident bands would have moved it up the running order a bit, just in case, but Electric Guest don’t have any issues with that. They shouldn’t, anyway, because they’ve arrived with an album that is sublime from start to finish. In any language, it’s the sort of record with which they could take on the world.
Mondo is out now via Because Music.
http://soundcloud.com/electricguest/troubleman
http://soundcloud.com/electricguest/this-head-i-hold
