Shit Robot – We Got A Love

Even before you press play, you pretty much know what you’re getting when listening to something on DFA records. Recent albums from Factory Floor, Holy Ghost! and tracks from their secret weapon The Juan Maclean all slotted into their kinda indie/kinda dance/kinda tech sounds of choice, and Marcus Lambkin’s second album as Shit Robot – four years after his debut, 2010’s From The Cradle to the Rave – fits right in. There’s the ESG-influenced one, a couple of nuevo disco cuts, the really camp one you can’t decide is a joke, and of course the obligatory ‘featuring Nancy Whang’ credit.

Whereas …Rave had an over-reliance on high profile featured vocalists from the likes of label head James Murphy, Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor and Planningtorock, We Got a Love is a more club based affair. When there are vocals, they tend to be hidden within the depths of the music, barely even noticeable. And it turns out this is a canny move.

When Lambkin moves away from the traditional house based tracks, We Got a Love comes good. “The Secret” is a sumptuous Patrick Cowley-influenced synth track, deep and propulsive with a “Funky Town” aping bass line brining an element of fun. “Dingbat” and “Space Race” are driving disco tracks which take the camp out of Italo and create a much less temporary pleasure. These tracks are the standouts, the only two which are either totally instrumental or, on the former, using vocals as another piece of the instrumentation, showing off Lambkin’s subtle hand similar to maverick dance artists such as Prins Thomas or Patrick Lindstrom.

There are of course plenty of house tracks here, but at times – similar to the Factory Floor’s take on techno or Temple’s two bob psych-shtick – it sounds strained, something not quite genuine. The Nancy Whang number “Do That Dance” is an attempt at new wave funky house that ends up clunky, while “Feels Like” and the title track fall into that category of house music that gets branded as a revival (see Azari & III and Disclosure); wailing divas, clinical synth lines and played out basslines.

This approach does, at times, work. “Do It Right”, featuring the breathy R&B vocals of Lidell Townself, is hideously old school, even containing classic house lyrics like “I wanna know, if you know, how to jack your body” – it’s dumb, cheeky and impossible to resist. “Feels Real” is also an intriguing listen, all mid tempo beats and a cautious riff tat has the track coming across as a modern take on Carl Craig’s “Throw”. All seriousness is melted by a ridiculous and brilliant falsetto by Jenr, otherwise known as Luke Jenner from recently departed punk-funkers The Rapture – here he’s equal parts Sylvester and all three Gibb brothers, and more impressive than on anything he’s sung for with that band of his for a long time.

If the so called new wave of house continues, We Got a Love fits right in. But as we all know, house music has been on an upwards trajectory since its creation. The legacy of Frankie, Farley and Marshall three decades ago lives on through new interpretations of house music by artists like Shit Robot. Although he doesn’t offer the genre anything noticeably new, he’s more than capable to keep the momentum going over a long player.