Museum of Love - Museum of Love

For many years Mahoney could be found keeping time for James Murphy’s LCD Soundsystem, but now that outfit appears to be in permanent retirement he’s stepped out from behind the kit and teamed up with friend of fourteen years, The Juan MacLean collaborator and Run Roc Records founder Dennis McNany, to give us something that sits comfortably next to the disco of LCD but with a little more soul.

What Mahoney has learned from Murphy (and McNany also from his long-standing ties to DFA Records) is that there’s nothing particularly wrong with taking your sweet time and letting a song unfold. Let the groove do all the work, allow the beat to develop, add a couple or three extra layers and everything should work okay. It rarely works better on Museum of Love than on “Down South”; a song that crosses the blurred lines between late-period disco and the early house music scene of New York City. We get deep, bassy synth lines, skittering disco percussion, both of which build and add extra electronic noises as the track develops. But what we also get is Mahoney’s voice for the first time, and her quite the dramatic crooner. Sounding like a mix of David Byrne and Hayden Thorpe, Mahoney artfully and archly yawns his way in and out of the groove and while nothing much happens it’s an engrossing song all the same. The same trick is pulled by Museum of Love on “In Infancy”; it’s the track that recalls LCD the most in its minimal dance construct but there’s twinkling electronics that nod towards Kosmiche music and then Mahoney pulls of dramatic vocals that make him sound like a lost disco diva. It shouldn’t work, but this genre mixing never feels thrown together.

It doesn’t always work, though. The hymnal of “FATHERS” is rather meandering and the repetition irks rather than soothes while “The Large Glass” doesn’t quite pull off the noisy no wave it is going for and it’s the one rare track where McNany’s production sounds laboured. Even the closing track “And All The Winners” seems too subdued and out of place as a song to finish off the album with.

There’s a run of three songs that saves Museum of Love; “The Who’s Who of Who Cares” builds to a brilliant free-jazz skronk outro, “Learned Helplessness of Rats (Disco Drummer)” appears to be drifting off before its nagging electro pulse worms its way into your brain, and first single “Monotronic” was, and is, a great statement of intent: minimal, bridging genres, an addictive beat and Mahoney beautifully cooing an intimate vocal in your ear.

Museum of Love is music that’s as cerebral as it is celebratory, but then we should expect nothing less from two men with such a glittering track record. It’s by no means perfect but it’s a step towards the review of the next album not needing to mention LCD Soun……who?