Hefner - Dead Media (Too Pure)

Mix a little bit of The Eels, Blur (circa Parklife),a few drum machines and a couple of eighties type synths in a huge blender and see what comes out. An odd oul' bunch to throw together to say the least, but it seems to have worked for Hefner. Well, up to a certain point anyway.

The songs themselves aren't the worst. For an album of fifteen tracks it does support itself fairly well. Of course you do get the odd let down, like "Waking up for you" and the lyrically disastrous "Peppermint taste". To make up for it though there are some great songs, such as "When the angels play their drum machines" and "Junk". The latter is a sweet, melancholic love song, deeply textured and highly emotive. "Half a life" is simple and offers a sweet breath of fresh air after the oddity that is "Treacle". Most of the bass lines scattered throughout are really good as well.

The instrumentation is definitely not something you'd have expected from Hefner in the past, but it's great that the band can keep coming up with new ways to challenge both themselves and their fans. At times the whole analogue synth sound seems to have been taken a little bit too far but they generally remember themselves on the next song and calm back down again.

Ken McGrath