Walking On A Song

When Australian electro-pop duo Empire Of The Sun’s Walking On A Dream appeared on album releases schedules for this month- the US release, we presume, as the import version has been floating around since October- One thing was certain: No way could the rest of the album possibly keep up with the title track, the band’s very wonderful one hit, to date:

We first caught the surreal, (at times almost uncomfortably) odd video sometime last year, and have since seen it hyped by the likes of Trent Reznor and many a hipster blog. It’s a truly infectious song, nearly impossible to dislike, or get out of your head once it’s in there.

The band followed up the breakthrough single with a second one entitled We Are The People, accompanied by another freaky exotic video. When we caught that one and found it to be not completely unspeakably inferior to Walking On A Dream, we decided to put the album under our snooty, pretentious critical microscopes.

Real quick, let me get one thing out of the way- if you were playing a drinking game based on the covers of albums in one’s collection, Walking On A Dream’s would kill you. Tiger? Check. Volcanoes? Check. Shooting stars? Outer space? Check and check. Hand holding a crystal ball? 5 shots. Does a dinosaur / dolphin hybrid count as both?

I consulted my go-to Australian misanthropic music junkie for local perspective (because, like Canada, the whole of Australia and all of its culture can be surveyed through the most casual examination of a tiny cross-section of residents). She informed me that… er, well, the “guy that sucks” was in some other band. And his sister has a band. Also, The Presets are good.

I pressed her to elaborate, and she linked me to songs by The Sleepy Jackson, and Pnau, from whence the duo came. Neither blew any skirts up over here.

Ultimately, we were very unfortunately right in our initial presumption- Walking On A Dream is the one great track on the album, while We Are The People is okay, and the rest is pretty bad. Despite what Sophie Bruce says (imagine me making the international hand-sign for jerking off, directed towards the UK music press), the album is no classic.

I want to try and be optimistic and positive, because Empire Of The Sun made one good song, and that’s more than most artists manage. But I don’t see any evidence suggesting there’s another in them.

I hope someday they prove me wrong. In the meantime, while I try and get Walking On A Dream out of my head once again, I hope that whatever the business model is that’s driving the music industry’s craving for hit singles, it’s working. And I hope that it serves these two men well for delivering one.

Walking On A Dream
April 21, 2009
EMI

1. Standing On The Shore
2. Walking On A Dream
3. Half Mast
4. We Are The People
5. Delta Bay
6. Country
7. The World
8. Swordfish Hotkiss Night
9. Tiger By My Side
10. Without You