I have a very large soft-spot for synthy dance pop, and Touché definitely massage that soft spot and make a nice little divot in there suitable for holding small items like candy or tchotchkes. Hm. That came out weird. But my point is, Touché’s new album It’s Fate… is great. The leading track and single “I’m A Man Not A Machine” grabbed me, but the album just kept doing that.
Aside from that cut, I particularly liked “Love Is A Trap”, with its awesomely dark central metaphor of a literal fox trap that singer Alex Lilly must cut her own hand off to escape. So, you know, not your typical love song there. Her bandmate Bram Inscore joins her on vocals with “Men Change”, another stand out about masculinity, aging and calling out the Donald Fagen-voiced narrator of “Hey Nineteen”.
Touché’s form of dance pop is 80s-influenced in the best ways. They use a lot of cool, strange sounds, some of which wouldn’t be out of place on an Industrial album — but it’s still poppy enough to be accessible. In places, Touché remind me of a much darker version of The Bird And The Bee — less chirping and more stinging. But honey’s in there too, so it’s not just, say, wasps. (Wasps are jerks and I figure if they made music, it’d probably be a somehow douchier version of, say, Creed. I think hornets would basically just be the guys knocking people over in the mosh pit of the wasp bands.)
At any rate, Touché are humans, not insects, and I am glad to say that I am definitely looking forward to more music by them. Human music is way better than insect music. That’s just mostly buzzing and maybe some chirping. Humans like Touché have learned how to master the synthesizer, and that’s just the best. The best.
Related articles
