This one time, my secondary school cancelled all the lessons in the afternoon and made us all (well, everyone in my year) sit in the assembly hall for about two hours watching this beatboxer called Mr Mouth. Like, wtf? Why was a beatboxer going around to our school? Did the teachers think we'd, like, 'relate' to this or something? Did this 'Mr Mouth' fellow expect to be met by anything else than the mocking indifference of a room full of sarcastic, middle-class teenagers? I mean sure, he could beatbox, but for all my fourteen year-old self cared he may as well have been making fart noises through his nose. The fact he turned out to be really earnest and posh was just the source of added humour. (Although in fairness he did manage to get some of the kids to participate and stuff and he was actually quite good at it I was just really baffled and thought it was really stupid).Well, isn't life funny, because some seven or so years on I'm now a high-flying successful student and part-time music critic, and this Mr Mouth hasn't done half badly for himself either, working his way up from school-touring beatboxer Mouth (which has to be pretty low down on the entertainment hierarchy) to genuine popstar FrankMusik, garnering mainstream hype and blog acclaim alike for his genuinely spectacular pure synth-pop stylings. The synths sound amazing, singular and specific and full and sumptuous and glitchy and sparkling and made up of squares. When Frank emotes it's going for an almost clumsily earnest place but the vocal processing makes it sound like a very convincing robot is doing it. And what's more, he's like, everywhere and stuff. These are really amazing songs, and they're everywhere. I mean, they chart in the mid-20s and stuff thus far... is that a sign that FrankMusik is maybe a bit too weird for the mainstream? Who knows, but it'd be a shame if so. You can't complain that the public aren't being force-fed what's good for them in this case. If FrankMusik doesn't become the biggest popstar in the world, it'll be through no fault of his own whatsoever. It will entirely be down to the stupidity of the public as a whole, and we're really going to have to start questioning the government's mandatory lobotomising policy for 50% of the population. This is as good as mainstream pop gets.OK, granted 'Confusion Girl' is a bit 90s boyband-y and toothless, and right next to it 'Your Boy' is kind of forced-epic. As is the title track. (not that Frank can't do big ballads full stop though, as 'Vacant Heart' testifies, he just seems to have forced too many out at once or something, or been forced) Actually it's kind of really slow-song heavy at the end... but you'd have to have lost a great deal of your joy to not find yourself jerking and living in “why aren't I as cool anymore?” moaner 'In Step' or breathtaking 'Better Off As 2'. I first became aware of Frank (as a musician, not as a beatboxer) through past single 'Three Little Words', perfect in its previous form but predictably fucked-with and given a new vocal take on the album. They should have left well alone, more effects and shit it did not need. Still, what are you going to do? It's still a good song.I don't like just nitpicking though. This is a really, really good pop record. Like, 'Dare' pop record good. I mean, personally I think it's fucking fantastic that Frankmusik has gotten this far without the machine chewing him up, extracting everything that's good from his sound, and compressing everything to oblivion so all the synths sound lame. It's not perfect but it's thrillingly fun and listenable. I wish everything on the radio sounded like this. 85%Frankmusik on Myspace