Review Summary: Smiling for all the wrong reasons.
Once upon a time, I actually enjoyed Two Door Cinema Club. Their debut,
Tourist History, was entertaining. They continued to put out some singles over the years that I found myself head-bopping to as well. Their infectious blend of pop and indie elements could be quite fun at times. It wasn’t anything amazing, but personally I had never listened to anything that I could outright call
bad.
Well, except for now, because
Keep On Smiling is bad. Real bad.
The album begins with an instrumental intro that is interesting for about fifteen seconds, until it continues for about ten times the length that it needs to be. Further, with album art and a title that is supposed to be evocative of fun and joy, the intro is anything but. (And yes, while I could write an entire review on the album art, I will refrain.)
What follows is a sloppy mess of jumbled music that's trying so hard not to be pigeonholed into any specific genre that it sounds like the mixing personnel took a disco band, an indie pop band, some samples, a bunch of acid, and a synth and just threw them all together to see if it would work. While there are many bands out there who theoretically could make such an odd combination good, Two Door Cinema Club don’t, and so they get absolutely no credit for even trying (the word “trying” being used very loosely in this context).
Adding insult to injury, Two Door Cinema Club seem to believe they are making music that is meant to be scrutinized by artists and musicians; music that is meant to be taken
seriously. Hardly to be found is the lean indie pop with tight verses, fun hooks and neat little melodies. Instead it is replaced with pretentious attempts at "real" indie music. It’s one thing for a pop band to be pompous about their songwriting prowess, but Two Door Cinema Club’s heads are so swollen that they have descended into a full-blown hallucination. Between the faux-disco pulsations and droning synths, the over-the-top attempts at being bouncy or catchy, and the lyrics having a whole uplifting schtick that doesn't actually make sense or work, it all kind of coalesces into a toxic stew of bad.
Truthfully, I can't point to any specific song on this album that is actually good. Sure, there are moments that aren't so bad, such as the synth line of “Lucky”, but these are very few and even further between. Normally I would be a bit saddened by such a hopelessly confused mess if it wasn't obvious that Two Door Cinema Club had put absolutely no effort into writing good music while putting all of their effort into trying to
look like they had. But hey, underneath this sloppy joe of a record, there is a silver lining:
it's funny. So while it will likely put a smile on your face, or possibly even evoke laughter, it's just the wrong kind.
