Lust For Youth

International (Sacred Bones)

18/20

Since conquering hearts back in 2012 with his sensational slice of analogue techno Growing Seeds, we’ve had our ears firmly fixed on Hannes Norrvide. Since then the Swedish youngster has found himself gracing our top 100 albums of the year list with his second full-length Perfect View and has now relocated to Copenhagen recruiting a pair of strapping mates for a third effort, International.

It’s safe to call this a departure; in fact, it’s an album that bears only a slight resemblance to the shambling, hollering chaos of its predecessors. At its heart though, it’s still a thing of throbbing, boyish tension that casts shadowy doubt on the gridlocked standard for industrially-influenced music. It’s Norrvide growing up and making music that retains menace and foreboding whilst infiltrating the realm of ‘pop’. Illume is a glowering, ice cold pop song that cuts basic, jarring synths into thumping 4/4, 909 kicks and fluttering claps. Norrvide’s strained vocals build on the sense of adolescent awkwardness that has run through his work while his bandmates’ gang shouts provide a basis for his newfound collaborative awakening. New Boys tempts interpretation, evoking the lads’ spiritual peers in Vår with not-so-cryptic titular and lyrical hints at homoerotic intrigue. Norrvide croons “are you in or… / let it burn to / cover up the truth.” Tracks like Armida and Running, meanwhile, tread musical ground that echoes of Abe Vigoda’s mechanical misery pop.

The only let up from perfectly produced, symmetrical thuds comes in the form of a short but sweet ambient piece titled Ultras – a beautiful, female- led, Italian spoken word track – Lungomare and After Touch, a dissonant ballad that features reverb-laden guitar and pitch shifted analogue synth that lurches towards a romanticised 80s pop fetish. It doesn’t matter though, the all-too-unnerving effect of the urgent kicks and swirling, glassy synth lines is actually what keeps the album feeling vital until the closing notes of title track International. It may repeat, but it doesn’t get boring. International is the result of a young human being constructing inner peace through creativity and producing art which is both broadly reassuring and startling in its personal reflection; an undiluted, heartfelt confrontation and deconstruction of commercially influenced structures. Truly postmodern pop music.

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Words: Billy Black