With the rise of all things fun, sexy, and trashy in electronic music, the time seems right for Add N to (X)'s campy yet challenging aesthetic to gain more appreciation. The group seizes the opportunity on Loud Like Nature by mixing their crazed analog synth experiments with more pop song structures and simpler, more streamlined arrangements. Essentially, it's the same approach they took on the somewhat muddled Add Insult to Injury, but this time the group finds a better balance of the simple and the strange, making Loud Like Nature their most exciting album since Avant Hard. It also manages to be their most focused and yet diverse work, spanning the poppy, dysfunctional lust of "Sheez Mine" and the expansive "Invasion of the Polaroid People," which features vocals by rock legend/old coot Kim Fowley on two tracks. Most of Loud Like Nature falls somewhere in between these extremes: Tracks like "All Night Lazy," "Party Bag," and the first single, "Take Me to Your Leader," revisit and revitalize the stomping glam rock/electronica fusion they pioneered on Add Insult to Injury with a sexier, more menacing edge, while "Electric Village," "- U Baby," and "P.P. Machine" -- which sounds a little like a broken jukebox trying to play several songs at once -- give a cuter surface to the dense swarms of analog noise with which Add N to (X) first made a name for themselves. Loud Like Nature isn't just a refinement of the group's previous statements, however; on this album they have their way with a number of different influences, from the strange but successful mix of hip-hop beats and loungey strings and flutes on "Up the Punks" to "Large Number," which mixes the breathless new wave of the Rezillos and a '50s-inspired chord progression with fuzzy, buzzy synths. "Pink Light," a delicate, creepy-around-the-edges piece of atmosphere, is another departure; with its hazy chords, twinkling melody, and singsong female vocals, it rivals Boards of Canada in its playful eeriness. It's the group's ability to be absurd, experimental, and catchy all at once that makes them so hard to place in the world of electronic-based music -- they're too scattered and quirky to truly belong with the wave of electro-clash artists, but too song- and rock-oriented to belong with more "serious" electronica. Fortunately, their misfit status is precisely what makes them so interesting, and Loud Like Nature reaffirms them as accessible iconoclasts.
© Heather Phares /TiVo