N.Y.C. duo
Savoir Adore don't exactly break any new ground on their second album,
Our Nature. The glittery disco beats meet dream pop meets new wave sound is one that many bands have tried on for size.
Friendly Fires, for one.
Cut Copy, another. The duo of
Paul Hammer and
Deidre Muro manage to give that well-worn template a little twist on the album thanks to their wide-eyed innocence and male-female vocal harmonies. The best songs on the album, like "Loveliest Creature" and "Empire of Light," have a light-as-air quality and some pretty sharp hooks, sharp as anything on a
Friendly Fires album. Elsewhere, "Speed Bump" is a nice
New Order pastiche with very cute vocals from
Muro, and "Sea of Gold" sounds like a solid
Thompson Twins album track. Unfortunately, their innocence and simple charm isn't enough to carry the album. The overly slick production makes it hard to really latch on to the music; too many of the songs sound like alt-rock radio fodder. "Anywhere You Go" in particular sounds like a
Letters to Cleo update and while that in itself may not be a bad thing, when every song begins to feel like that as the album goes on, it's a problem. There's a really good EP hidden in the overly long album -- just grab all the tracks that lean more toward new wave electro pop and ditch the alt-rock, and it works. As it stands, though,
Our Nature is too long and just not unique enough to really stand out among all the artists treading similar ground.