“Je Viens de La” begins with a wonderful layering of a funky bassline, sparkling electronic chimes and a feverish, disco-inspired arrangement. Two Door Cinema Club lacks the mad touch for bringing the genres’ best elements harmoniously together that bands such as Arctic Monkeys have mastered and instead leaves listeners with a malformed chimera of an album.įor all its blemishes, still, Gameshow has its redemptive moments. It’s an album that has something to say but without the means to quite articulate it. Their music makes too many compromises in their haphazard attempt to fuse these beloved musical styles and makes their shift toward a grittier and more lethargic sound come off as poorly communicated angst. “Gasoline” is a clear example of what’s wrong with this release: Despite all the genres it borrows from - funk, rock ‘n’ roll and indie-pop - this rich catalogue of sounds remains painfully stale. The unintentionally claustrophobic theme of the album is perpetuated by the continuous, vaguely musical hum looming in the background. A guitar buzzes on with a simple but completely forgettable melody and ends the song with another tiring solo. He sounds sloppy, rather than the nonchalant he seems to be going for. It begins with Trimble’s deadpan voice, stuck between a croon or a conversation and not bothering to make the distinction. There are only so many wailing, distorted guitar solos the listener needs to hear before they lay the headphones down from fatigue.ĭeluxe-version cut “Gasoline” is the main culprit. Gameshow drones on without remorse for the legion of indie-pop fans that make up Two Door Cinema Club’s fan base, leaving behind the glistening pop sound that laid the groundwork for the band’s previous success and fumbling with all the inspiration drawn from other genres.
The song’s repetitive structure and punishing length - nearly five minutes - leave listeners with, at best, a mildly amusing interaction of sounds stuck on a loop.Įach track on Gameshow nears or breaks the four-minute mark it’s no wonder the album is so stuffy and uncomfortable. Neither Trimble’s exhausting falsetto nor the howling guitar solo conclusion can save “Fever” from its musical failings. Lead singer Alex Trimble’s voice suits the tone, wistfully detached before the song’s mounting tension concludes in a mournful anger.īut as the album trudges on, it stumbles over the little momentum it had with songs such as “Fever.” With its messy, scattered instrumentation and blandly indistinct melody, the song sounds like MySpace elevator music for a run-down disco. afternoons than the neon-lit night out offered by Tourist History and Beacon.
The opening guitar and bass both clamor for attention while children’s voices chant a catchy “na-na-na.” “(Wreck)” signals a shift toward the slow and dreamy, more suited for muggy L.A. The aforementioned “(Wreck)” is unmemorable but promises a more experimental direction for the band. Two Door Cinema Club pussyfoots around the creative leap it needs in order to evolve as a band, trapping listeners with an increasingly claustrophobic, monotonously overproduced set of tracks. The first three song titles of Two Door Cinema Club’s Gameshow sum the album up concisely: “Are We Ready? (Wreck),” “Bad Decisions” and “Ordinary.”Īfter a quiet three years since its last release, the Changing of the Seasons EP, the British indie-pop band emerged from its musical hibernation with Gameshow, an album filled with sluggish, uninspired tracks, each one indistinguishable from the next.
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