The Superimposers Harpsichord Treacle by: Dan Osmolowski Thu:24-Apr-08 Label: Wonderfulsound Year: 2008 WB rating 20 out of 100

This moment was bound to arrive. An album so dreadful that the mere thought of having to listen to the songs more than once has the bile rising up the oesophagus. The signs were bad from the start. “The Superimposers?” What the fuck kind of name is that? “Harpsichord Treacle?”

The Superimposers are intimately familiar with the sunshine pop practiced in the late 1960s by American acts such as The Association, Free Design, The Turtles and 5th Dimension. Lyrically, sunshine pop was never about tackling the big issues or dark recesses of the mind; rather, it was fascinated with the hippie movement’s message of spreading peace and love. The inanity of the lyrics throughout Harpsichord Treacle is truly stifling. In such a cynical age perhaps the aim of the band was to strip away the complexity of modern life and reintroduce some naivety to the human condition. “As conversation goes/Our constellation grows/It has to be that way/There’s little more to say,” they sing over sampled string swells and all manner of floral 1960s instrumentation on the opening track, ‘Anymore’. Let me treat you to another gem before we leave The Superimposers’ lyrical ineptness alone: “The leaves all turn to brown/They’re falling all around/The rain pours down/Will you stick around?” (from the imaginatively titled, ‘Autumn Falls’). Sorry, but all I can picture in my mind right now is John Lydon leaning back and projecting a massively ‘globulous’ lurgy skyward.

This music is so tragically limp that it’s nauseous – it plods at a pace that makes Beach House sound like speed metal. ‘Kicking Around’ and ‘Twilight’ barely register a pulse. To add insult to injury, the former is built around a chime sample that would have to be one of the most supremely irritating soundbites imaginable. The mix is so thin and treble heavy that one could envisage dogs leaping fences from streets away just to be in the presence of this record.

The only joy to be found here is in ‘Hand Me Down’s’ handclaps and jaunty, at least semi-memorable, melody. Elsewhere, you are more than likely to drown in routinely staid harmonies and tempos that could soundtrack a film about senior citizens who drag race ‘electric personal assistive mobility devices’.

Retro-futurism is all well and good. Cut Copy do the 80s indie dance thing and Black Mountain plunder 70s rock, but the distinguishing feature of these bands is that they do it with vigour, vitality and enough originality so as to reference and not rip off. The Superimposers’ sound is one that is so firmly rooted in a bygone era that one has to wonder why anyone would listen to it. If I want my hunger for 60s baroque pop sated, I’ll listen to Odyssey and Oracle, thank you very much.