The Medic Droid

What’s Your Medium

[3/4]

Old genres never die, they’re just reconstituted. So as grass begins to grow around the electroclash headstone, Digitalism and Justice start ripping pages out of Daft Punk while the Medic Droid offer their punk-pop perspective. Frontman Chris Donathon’s careening croon aches and breaks over anthemic trance lines, pulling a decade of (over) emo(tive) vocal histrionics that actually mesh well with the overheated beat. It’s like Pete Wentz caught up with his ambition on an Ibiza dance floor where it was lip-synching to the Faint. Sturdy hooks anchor their eight-song debut, the best of which received prior release as singles like the pulsing anomie of “Keeping Up With The Joneses,” the slinky industrial pickup scene ode, “FScene8” and “Fer Sure,” with its demand, “Fuck me in the backseat.” Beyond those and the oceanic lament, “The Killer Anna,” the rest is perfunctory filler epitomized by a disco-fied cover of Madonna’s “Into the Groove.” (MODERN ART/EPIC) Chris Parker