Mixtapes & Cellmates – Rox

After their electronic debut album in 2008, Sweden’s Mixtapes & Cellmates went their separate ways to pursue diverse side projects. Some went techno, some went punk and some went to pop. Two years on, they’ve reunited and, in effect, restarted, wiping their old material from memory and installing a new drummer.The band claim to have completely severed all links to their past, yet there are some elements that remain similar. For example, instead of electronics, they’ve drowned their music in an abundance of synthy keyboards and squeaky high-pitched guitar licks. At times, it works fairly well; ‘All Of The Above’ sounds a bit like a poor man’s mix of The Killers and U2. In opener ‘Never’, the sickliness of the synths is slightly diluted by the typically sturdy bassline of modern shoegaze-indie and Glasvegas-style reverb. However, ‘On Fire’ sounds more like 80’s pop played through a distorted amp: think A-Ha stirred together with Feeder to form a semi-loud flimsiness. A few tracks of such sound would be bearable, even enjoyable, but a whole album full of them seems uninspiring and dull.In contrast with the monotony of the album’s instrumentation, the microphone is swapped around by the members. Some bands do well at smoothly switching around the responsibility of being the frontperson, such as The Cribs. Sadly, in the case of Mixtapes & Cellmates, it is quite irritating. Just as you get settled into the male singer’s craggy Fyfe Dangerfield-like voice in ‘Never’, bassist Matilda Berggren comes to the front. Her poppy vocals in ‘Soft Eyes’ are heavy in vibrato, obscuring the sound of the pretty Silversun Pickups-style guitar riffs. By the time she reappears in The Cure-esque ‘Brighter Place To Go’, the album feels tired and laborious.It’s a shame that Rox isn’t more stimulating, especially after the rocky past that Mixtapes & Cellmates have had. The instability of vocalists and the drenching of dated keyboard sounds mars the potentially decent wall of indie guitars and cymbals. Perhaps if there was more variety between the styles of the tracks then Rox may seem like something to get enthusiastic about.