Reader As Detective

Album review

Following 2018's State Dogs: Singles 2017-2018, New Orleans duo Generationals return with their sixth album, 2019's hooky and melodic Reader as Detective. While technically a compilation, State Dogs featured ten new songs Generationals recorded and released as standalone singles over a two-year period starting in 2017. That process purportedly helped shake up the way bandmates Grant Widmer and Ted Joyner thought about making an album and brought a welcome sense of creative freedom to the material. That renewed vigor also seems to have been carried over to Reader as Detective, as the record offers a decidedly vibrant and eclectic mix of songs. Cuts like "I Turned My Back on the Written Word," "A List of Virtues," and "Deadbeat Shiver" are buoyant anthems, rife with a mix of fuzzy keyboards, twangy guitars, and swirling percussion. It's a sound that conjures a fantasy laptop collaboration between MGMT, Bruce Springsteen, and '80s disco mastermind Giorgio Moroder. Similarly evocative, "Breaking Your Silence" has a driving, mid-tempo groove and yearning melody that evokes a similar Springsteen or perhaps Tom Petty vibe. Elsewhere, Widmer and Joyner slide into the falsetto, Casio sensuality of "Dream Box," and draw on the Killers' emotive new wave uplift on the shimmering "Save This for Never." In fact, as with the opening "I've Been Wrong Before," much of Reader as Detective finds Generationals striking a perfect balance between a thoughtful, folk-rock intimacy and colorful, '80s pop production palette.

© Matt Collar /TiVo