Following 2018's State Dogs: Singles 2017-2018, New Orleans duo
Generationals return with their sixth album, 2019's hooky and melodic
Reader as Detective. While technically a compilation, State Dogs featured ten new songs
Generationals recorded and released as standalone singles over a two-year period starting in 2017. That process purportedly helped shake up the way bandmates
Grant Widmer and
Ted Joyner thought about making an album and brought a welcome sense of creative freedom to the material. That renewed vigor also seems to have been carried over to
Reader as Detective, as the record offers a decidedly vibrant and eclectic mix of songs. Cuts like "I Turned My Back on the Written Word," "A List of Virtues," and "Deadbeat Shiver" are buoyant anthems, rife with a mix of fuzzy keyboards, twangy guitars, and swirling percussion. It's a sound that conjures a fantasy laptop collaboration between
MGMT,
Bruce Springsteen, and '80s disco mastermind
Giorgio Moroder. Similarly evocative, "Breaking Your Silence" has a driving, mid-tempo groove and yearning melody that evokes a similar
Springsteen or perhaps
Tom Petty vibe. Elsewhere,
Widmer and
Joyner slide into the falsetto, Casio sensuality of "Dream Box," and draw on
the Killers' emotive new wave uplift on the shimmering "Save This for Never." In fact, as with the opening "I've Been Wrong Before," much of
Reader as Detective finds
Generationals striking a perfect balance between a thoughtful, folk-rock intimacy and colorful, '80s pop production palette. ~ Matt Collar