White Williams

Smoke

[3.5/5]

If blogosphere buzz counts for anything-and you can bet your Brooklyn Vegan-reading ass it does-then White Williams will blow up any minute now. Having emerged from Cleveland’s DIY electronic-music scene with Gregg “Girl Talk” Gillis won’t hurt his media profile, either. As for Williams’ debut album, Smoke is a refreshingly earnest, retro-futurist electro-pop opus. It recalls Matthew Dear’s Asa Breed in the way it earnestly mixes and matches elements from electronic music and rock’s past to conjure fresh reconfigurations of those genres. Williams is especially fond of Krautrock’s elegantly chugging motorik rhythm, deadpan-camp vocals (which sound much like Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard) and glam’s extroverted boogie and strutting guitar riffs. Ultimately, Smoke is a pleasant pastiche of David Bowie’s Berlin period-with a lab-coated synth freakout at disc’s end for all those Morton Subotnick fans out there. (TIGERBEAT6) Dave Segal