Generationals - Alix

Last time out – and just last year – on Heza, Joyner and Widmer toned down the indie-pop tendencies of their first two albums and shaded it in hazy layers of dream pop and shoegaze. While plenty can be said for those subgenre’s cozy and comfy offerings, hearkening back to Rosie Jones’s statement, what fun is that!? Apparently for these two, not enough, and off to the studio they went to produce what would become their most unabashed pop album yet. Right off the bat, lead track “Black Lemon” proves as bright and juicy as its citrus namesake, built on warm pulsing synths and a chipper, chirpy riff. Though, we all know lemons aren’t black but that colour in the title isn’t just artsy-fartsiness; just like the lemon, sinking your teeth into the tune’s luscious pulp reveals its sourness, its darkness. Listen closely and you’ll find Widmer bemoaning that he was “taught to turn the other cheek and get my back stabbed” and now he’s “just trying to make it to the end of the week”.

This rueful undercurrent churns beneath much of the album; these are certainly emotions suited for their foray into muted undertones on Heza, but Joyner and Widmer figure, what the hell, if I’m going to be down, I’m going to be down, there’s no sense in sounding and looking like it. “Reading Signs” snappy, bubblegum veneer is leavened by lines like, “you’ve got the whole world thinking that / it’s amazing that you made it at all”; “Heart In Two”s obvious lyrical theme is solidly founded on a classic 80s synthpop ballad sound. And therein lies Generationals’ primary success in sidestepping the cheerful overkill of early albums. Alix stays balanced through its slower and subtler, though no less poppy, numbers. For every Breakfast Club raver like “Reviver”, there’s a slow bubbler like “It Took A Minute”; where “Black Lemon” and “Gold Silver Diamond” go a long way toward rotting your teeth, “Charlemagne” and “Now Look At Me”s restraint act as fine digestifs.

The question with practically any album is where does it put its creators now and where can they go from here? Alix is not a perfect album – Widmer and Joyner’s vocals still prove an acquired taste and while better balanced than previous efforts, the duo could still use a wider dynamic. However, it does arguably prove that Generationals’ bread and butter lies on the poppy side of the fence, this perhaps their most cohesive statement to date, and their yellow brick road’s poppy fields appear to serve only to revitalize.