ADULT - Resuscitation - VBR [2001]
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Pitchfork Record Review
Adult.
Resuscitation
[Ersatz Audio; 2001]
Rating: 8.7
Adult. isn't so much a "band" in the conventional sense as it is a pair of superheroes, done up in epaulettes and cigarette-leg trousers, embroiled in a glorious struggle to make life on Earth vastly more enjoyable for you and yours. By the same token, Resuscitation, a reformatted collection of their 12-inch singles, isn't so much an "album" as it is the soundtrack to an alternately beautiful and hilarious fantasy world, one where kids dressed like Central European intelligence agents congregate in dark clubs to bang heads and twitch spasmodically until they're utterly, magnificently spent. It's made half of my thoughts about little words like "electro" and "punk" cringe in its great looming shadow; it's made me bounce and shout like a ninny more than anything else I've heard in years. My personal enthusiasm for this record knows no bounds, and I can only hope that it's mildly contagious.
They're from Detroit: Adam Lee Miller, who makes sequencers race and pound, and Nicola Kuperus, whose every communication with us is designed to imply convoluted intrigues surrounding it. I wrote last month that they "think they're punks," but their records sweep away the concept-- the tracks on Resuscitation function as grim, stripped-bare techno, razor-sharp synth-pop, and snarling electro-punk, but most of all they just blaze effortlessly away. The drum machines are sharp and propulsive, hissing and spitting while the programming, grainy as all get-out, ping-pongs furiously around itself, building and collapsing in a light-speed flurry of hooks. (You can dance to it if you have massive amounts of frustrated energy, a strong heart, and enough room that you won't accidentally hurt anyone.) Kuperus' vocals, obsessed with communication, miscommunication, privacy, and consumption, range from a blank chant to a wounded sing-song, clipped and processed into a state that's less robotic than distant and distorted. The overall effect is like listening to a strobe light.
All of this makes them sound angry and cold, which they're not: their best tracks walk the same fine line as Gary Numan's "Cars", offering up both slamming beats and pop hooks perfect for bemused driver's-seat posing. It's tempting to think that at least Miller has some metal in his past, because the tone is the same; his tightly arranged kicks and slams seem lighthearted, meant for entertainment and less a product of aggression than flat-out, amped-up good times.
What sets Adult. apart from their peers, aside from the hyperactive blur of their songs, is the amount of attention they pay to form and detail: every measure brings new tricks, sprinting programs turning acrobatically on dimes, running circles around themselves in perfectly choreographed conversations with the vocals. These tracks come across as fierce pop songs that would make just as interesting instrumentals, which, with the pasted-together collages of vocal snippets, some of them really are. And once one can get past Resuscitation's massive dose of Loveless syndrome (e.g. a signature sound unique enough that the tracks run together somewhat), it becomes apparent just how flexible the duo's approach is.
"Skinlike", the collection's most beautiful moment, soars like A Flock of Seagulls; "Nausea", its most light-hearted, stomps determinedly along while Kuperus repeatedly chews up and spits out its title, his posing and preening almost audible. The wonderfully misanthropic "Human Wreck" reaches heights of buzzing industrial grind-- like The Normal's bleak "Warm Leatherette" done over as hard techno by agit-prop guerillas-- but the surprisingly wistful "Contagious" has Kuperus singing her sad message over a sunny major-key lilt. That message runs like this: "Your signal failed-- but I know you're contagious."
It's worth referencing the cover art here for Kuperus' photography, which adorns many releases on Adult.'s label, Ersatz Audio. Her striking agenda is the creation of scenes that function as stills from non-existent espionage thrillers: what convoluted plot climax could have led to the scene we see on Resuscitation's cover? Her lyrics are another grab-bag of high-tech anxieties: in "Pressure Suit" it's the smoke from her own flaming boots that gives her the privacy to speak, and the hook to "Hand to Phone", the smoothest-running single here, chants, "She speaks to you in monotone/ Why can't I come over?" Elsewhere, it's blank furniture in empty rooms, handbags full of money, "lovesick minors at night," and, of course, all that neurotic nausea.
It's terrifically conceived and even more terrifically crafted, the sort of record so perfect in its own aims that parsing out influences or agendas seems a fool's game. These tracks, this duo, this entity that is Adult.: they're a great and interesting thing, this nation's best inducers of head-banging, high-speed driving, amazed chuckles, and giddy bedroom shout- and/or pose-alongs. They really are superheroes, I swear it-- and when I'm listening to them, the bulk of everything else I've heard since I first heard them seems pointless and humorless, uptight and dull in the face of the massive amounts of fun these two seem to be having. I encourage you to join us.
-Nitsuh Abebe, December 13, 2002
