The new group from Matthew Hord and Frankie Rose is called Fine Place. The sound of this new duo is austere electronica of a sort that seems rooted in the work of the pioneers of the form from the Reagan era. This New Heaven, out on Friday via Night School Records, is a striking record, and one that's surprisingly easy to embrace even given the icy surfaces within its grooves.
Opener "I Can't Shake It" made me think of early Fad Gadget even as the title cut, "This New Heaven" oozed a Cure-like heaviness that was beguiling. That the Vivian Girls musician should owe such a debt to Robert Smith and crew might be surprising were it not for the fact that she recorded a cover of the entire Seventeen Seconds album not so long ago. Rose wisely imbues This New Heaven and its offerings with a lot of her own styles as a performer, and this record isn't quite so far removed from some of what was on the excellent Cage Tropical, even if the shadings here are a good deal darker.
Somehow Rose and Hord made a record that's not simply an exercise in appropriating a past style. Sure, some of this feels like a tribute album to Joy Division, early Cocteau Twins, etc. ("Tending to Twenty"), but on the whole, most of it sounds fresh. "Impressions of Me", for example, made me think of both my favorite Cure song ("All Cats are Grey") and lots of side two of my favorite New Order album (Brotherhood). The common thread there and here is an introspective mood played out over sweeping synth-figures and percolating drum patterns. That's here, and Fine Place do this kind of thing with the right mix of emotion and detachment. That, to me, is the key to what makes this genre work in the first place. And This New Heaven works remarkably well.
This New Heaven is out on Friday via Night School Records.
[Photo: Night School]