Speaker Bite Me Action Painting by: Joseph Coscarelli Mon:06-Aug-07 Label: Morningside Year: 2007 WB rating 79 out of 100

To mold the avant-garde with gentle hands, draping it in a guise of familiarity, allows for the straddling of a line between accessibility and experimentation. Danish group Speaker Bite Me are masterful in this conceit of eccentricities tempered with pulls of directness, and craft a fresh international take on American dance-flavored rock music. Behind your standard disco bass lines, synth swoops and sultry female coos are atypical electronic drones, a roundabout approach to song-craft with nuances that veer from pleasantly surprising to downright terrifying. European club music at its core, there is also a druggy, psychedelic vibe bubbling amidst what could easily pass as dumbed-down body groovers without weight. Instead, Action Painting delivers a non-linear head trip that might tempt to be called a breath of fresh air if the space around the record's atmosphere wasn't so hazy, all red pills or blue, like a plunge down the rabbit hole.    

'Fistful of Air' is the opener and most immediate take on funky bass and straight-up rock grooves, and despite being called Denmark's Sonic Youth, this one is unmistakably Talking Heads. David Byrne, though, is absent and in his place is the saccharine sweet and satin smooth Signe Hoirup Wille-Jorgensen whose lead vocals are airy and refined, truly an inviting presence. She commands the record with diva-like charisma and has the sass of the year's disco queen Kathy Diamond without ever being outrageous or overbearing. 'Crazy Horse' is a doomsday anthem with dark, apocalyptic synths and begins the record's streak of politically conscious dance-floor downers, as if they're anticipating impending ruin from a pessimistic, chaotic dream state. Bleeding into nightmare territory, 'Belle De Boskoop' and 'War Is Over' both adopt a foreboding drone and startling vocal effects, whispering fragile secrets teetering between serenity and disorder. 

Like Emily Haines and Metric, Jorgensen and Speaker Bite Me have an ear for pulsing grooves while still sounding like a pop-rock band deep down somewhere, but where Metric work with an attitude-laced strictness leaving room for towering crunchy guitars, Action Painting favors a layered and longwinded patience that takes them to the eight-minute mark on 'Landscapes Can Move Themselves'. The song is meditative and dense, with low rumbles and samples of what sounds like the ocean, waves crashing on shore. The band's take on the anti-war 'Where Have All The Flowers Gone?' is similar again with its sparse handclaps and alien whirrs, beeps coming and going.  

Speaker Bite Me are a band not afraid to take the long way, cognizant of the flourishes that come along with sonic detours. And like the electro-clash women of Ladytron, the group understands the worth of a good trance, hypnotizing listeners with buzzes and vibrations under manipulated voice. Instead of deliberate bangers that hit you in the gut and make their way to your feet, the brand of dance music found on Action Painting is far more cerebral, free to swish around uncontrollably in your head before nestling comfortably – half in body, half in mind.