Send "The Shortwave Set " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Why would someone want a replica sun machine, when we have a real sun, which is completely free to use? The Shortwave Set don't care about practical questions such as this, of course-- they're fine with their LP title being a fancy, six-syllable way to say "lamp." A second question arises, then: Why make things so unnecessarily complicated, and then be coy about it? It's semantics, sure, but also a useful way to think about the group and their latest album. Replica Sun Machine is an exceedingly simple thing-- with tunes so familiar-feeling to be easily ignorable-- but it's presented with a false sense of intricacy, gussied up and disguised as something more than it really is. Now, the important question: Is it any wonder that Danger Mouse signed on to produce it?The Shortwave Set and Danger Mouse have a lot in common: They're both highly competent at what they do-- artfully, but not flashily, recombining recognizable music and cultural signifiers into pleasing new shapes. And like the technologies that the Set are enamored of, when they do their jobs really well, they just disappear. Take "Now 'til '69", for example, which operates in the same careful nostalgic register as a PT Cruiser, right down to its last "be bop a lula" and Jerry Lee Lewis piano pound. It sounds positively huge and incredibly clean, like a well-funded local theater putting on a "rock'n'roll" revue, and that's the prevailing tone of the album: Everything feels factory-stamped, looked over by Inspector #22, and mostly bereft of any humanity whatsoever. There's a reason that "Glitches 'N' Bugs" sounds so nostalgic, after all: Those things are ironed out well in advance of the shipping date....full text |
| Musicomh |
| The contrast between first and second albums couldn't be greater. For their debut record The Debt Collection, the Shortwave Set trio set up in a front room in Deptford, using old records and broken junk shop instruments rescued from Greenwich market, diverting them through a sampler where appropriate. Fast forward three years or so and the band find themselves in the studio of Danger Mouse in Los Angeles, working on the follow up. In tow are John Cale and Van Dyke Parks. And yet the band's identity has remained, their musical textures still cut from the same cloth. This time the sound is more upfront; there's a confidence in the musical statements they are making. There is also extra colour, courtesy of Parks' wonderful string arrangements, which add a depth to the music previously unexploited. Upbeat lyrics and beats trade hands, though the sense that something dark lurks just around the corner remains. That is fully realised in Now 'Till 69, where a breezy opening of 'beebopaloola' backing vocals finds itself ultimately whacked on the head by an ominous piano stroke, dragging the track into the shadows. Yet even here the record's good spirits refuse to bow, and the following Distant Daze is softly reflective in a manner Sarah Cracknell would have approved....full text |
| Entertainment |
| Produced by Danger Mouse, boasting string arrangements by Van Dyke Parks and “atmospherics” courtesy of John Cale, the Deptford trio's second album has credits that read like a winning hand in a game of pop Top Trumps. Building on a foundation of boutique festival-friendly psychedelia, Stereolab-like grooves, Free Design harmonies and an occasional faux glam strut, the band veers from the sublime to the ridiculous and back again. The best aspect is the Swedish singer Ulrika Bjorsne's prim enunciation, adding deadpan oddness to the cries on Now Till '69 and to Sun Machine's eerie acid jangle....full text |
The Shortwave Set lyrics
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