I have no problem with most of the music on Beat Connection’s debut full-length The Palace Garden; it’s perfectly serviceable electronic Balearic pop, Korallreven-lite, if you will, and there are some very good tunes across its running time. It’s the vocals that often ruin the experience for me. While other electronic acts shroud vocals in an ethereal haze, manipulate with autotune or hide them under a fuzz of reverb the Seattle four-piece (who must have the least “Seattle” sound in the history of the city) bring the vocals of Tom Eddy to the fore, and to be honest it doesn’t always work.

Beginning as a two-piece of Jordan Koplowitz and Reed Juenger, they added Eddy and the live drums and bass of Jarred Katz and Mark Hunter before releasing last year’s well-received Surf Noir EP, and really not a lot has changed since then. Beat Connection are still a sunny bunch of young lads making tropically-tinged synth pop, there are some smashing melodies and beats to be found on The Palace Garden and it flows like a proper album should, and when it’s good, it’s very good. Just listen to the double-hit of ‘Oeuvreboard’ and ‘Invisible Cities’: the vocal-less former is a short bliss-out that leads into the pop-and-snap of the latter, the sound of lying on a beach taking in the early-evening sun as the music from the locals filters through (barely) to you. Here, the vocals are balanced well with the music and don’t overpower the band’s generally fine beats, and this is again the case on ‘Think Feel’, featuring the guest vocals of Chelsey Scheffe. Some lovely glockenspiel combines with proto-disco beats, while Scheffe’s light voice drifts elegantly across the track, in what is one of the best moments on the album.

But then there’s the downside to consider: ‘The Palace Garden 4AM’ has cloyingly audible vocals from Eddy – who, it has to be said, has a remarkably unappealing and bland voice – while ‘Saola’ prattles on about “champagne glasses” to no discernible point; while ‘Other Side of the Sky’ tries on a Hot Chip falsetto for size, that really doesn’t fit. This only goes to reinforce the idea that the vocal-less tracks are constantly the highlights (opener ‘New Criteria’ is a hazy beauty and ‘Foreign Embassy’ a brief hit of sunshine), along with those that bury the vocals further down in the mix, such as the dancefloor-friendly album highlight ‘Sometimes Wonder’. The epic closing track ‘En Route’ is the early-morning comedown following the former’s night of dancing; it’s a fine track of shimmering synths and mix of bright live drums and processed beats and shows that when Beat Connection are good, they’re very good.

Overall, though, The Palace Garden is disappointingly hit and miss; the positives are that the album flows as one piece and the mood of the record as a whole is brilliantly judged. On the flip side the band let things drift on a few tracks, and I can’t help but dislike those untreated, naked vocals. It’s neither a success nor a failure, but a debut album that should help Beat Connection head in the right direction.

Listen to The Palace Garden