Darwin Deez – Darwin Deez
Ignore the haircut (or lack of). Ignore the hopefully-ironic ‘tache. Try even to ignore the “wacky” name, bells and whistles. With little other than a minimal keyboard, hand-clap percussion and a head full of fairies, Darwin Deez has pulled a masterstroke on his self-titled debut. His saccharine-high, indie ditties are undercut with literate perversion, his summery whimsy laced with hippy gold.
Simple, Deez is a more-often-than-not great pop-star. He stands out from the crowd, is anti-establishment and has a few poptacular tunes to back it all up. The project is gleefully lent credibility with its bedroom qualities – be warned, there is little shiny over-production here.
On “Constellations” he even gets away with the lyrical opening “Twinkle, twinkle little star / How I wonder what you are” – a true master at work you’ll agree. It’s three-minute perfection, taken down a touch for the mid-tempo follow-on “Deep Sea Divers”, which coasts on lazy melody and hazy soft percussion.
“DNA” skips through fields of tall grass with a favoured partner, basking in its own radiance and talking whimsically of “double strands” and “molecules”. The spiralling guitar on “Up In The Clouds” suggests a schooling in The Strokes , the up-and-down guitar progressions of “The Bomb Song” in Interpol , though Deez bathes the both of them in a poppy haze.
His voice is given a little echo for the highly likeable “Bed Space”, which drawls and spins like looking at the clouds from a freshly mown lawn. The downright unstoppable single “Radar Detector” is a danceable, loveable alt-pop masterpiece that leads into the darkly comic finisher “Bad Day”. Bouncing along it conspires by multifarious hypothetical means to ruin some poor unknown’s day. “Everyday ought to be a bad day for you” Deez starts, before continuing “I would like to be your girlfriend so I could dump you”.
Sure, it may all age badly and Deez will likely never again get the balance right, but for now, Deez looks set to be the king of summer.
Darwin Deez is out on April 12th 2010 on Lucky Number