3 – Moderat – III (Monkeytown Records)
All the best things come in threes: magic numbers, Christmas ghosts, wishes, world wars. The completion of Apparat and Modeselektor’s Moderat studio album trilogy has led to their best work yet for Monkeytown: tune after tune after tune.
If III lacks the depth of II, it’s because they’ve gone for the pop hits. But what hits, so richly produced. The epic breaks of Reminder. The gleaming house of Running. The tragic melancholy of the xx-inflected The Fool. If the chart sounded like this all the time, I’d retract my Bruno Brookes comments.
Yes, it’s bombastic. Yearning. It’s the most unsubtle of the three; the one with the Ewoks. Cor, I'm really damning with faint praise here. At least I'm not still likening them to Steps. But you mark my words: the techniques that make this album so stellar will be cookie-cuttered by producers for years to come. A spellbinding listen start to finish. Three out of three.
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