Imagine a low, slow alarm call and a sleepy metropolis waking up, blinking its street light eyes one last time before being extinguished by the sunrise and daylight. The city flashes before your eyes in an explosion of sights, sounds, smells and a 24 hours time lapse before it reaches the sunset, nightfall and its inevitable end.
Already being hailed as ‘their best album yet’ by the UK media, welcome to Royksopp’s fifth and final album for Wall of Sound / Cooking Vinyl. Where did the time go? They’ve come a long way since the ground breaking Melody A.M with its fresh-faced naivete and effervescent trip pop lounge languour.
From the outset, ‘Skulls’ and ‘Monument’ crunch your cranium into your scapula with its buzzing distorted synth and bass, scraping strings and hardwired vocodered vocals. Robyn’s distinctive vocal elevates ‘Monument’ into a lighters aloft, stadium singalong but this is unapologetic, uncompromising listening that doesn’t ever play straight to the pop charts gallery. There is, however and strangely something for every listening mood, whether that’s accompanied by ‘You Know I Have To Go’s plaintiff vocal and emotional heartbreak or romping around breathlessly ‘Sordid Affair’ style in small Parisian attics for a little 5 à 7. Or in the uptempo – ‘I Had this thing’ with its rousing edm riffs or in ‘Running To The Sea’ with Susanne Sondfor’s soaring, laser cut vocal.
The quirky synth electronica is softly humanised by Susanne Sondfor’s fragile vocal in ‘Save Me’ but then aggressed and jostled by Robyn’s unstable ‘What the fuck is wrong with you’ sugar coated choral vitriol. Jamie Mc Dermott and The Irrespressibles feature again on the haunted, shivering ‘Compulsion’ – which leads the listener on a complex journey which accelerates and decelerates, suspending you from the lyric ‘if you could see just what I see … would you believe’ then washing you up on a shoreline somewhere miles away from the beginning of your journey.
Unsurprisingly, ’The Inevitable End is an album steeped in deep reflection, and laced with lyrical melancholy, yearning, anger and sadness. But then again, the inevitable end of any relationship always is. Still, like the final track ‘Thankyou’ and Dr Seuss so aptly say ‘Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened’. Breathe. Let it go. There are no ugly endings, just beautiful beginnings. Here’s to Royksopp version 6.0
4 out of 5
Reviewed by Paulette
{http://soundcloud.com/royksopp/monument-the-inevitable-end-version}
