Plushgun is another one of those bedroom-studio-to-myspace-and-beyond stories. I can imagine writer/producer/arranger Daniel Ingala in another time wearing a paper general’s hat and sitting amidst the massed ranks of toy tin soldiers – it’s that sense of a self-created world in miniature that comes across, something that for better and for worse the internet has helped to flourish.
Ingala’s world sounds a lot like The Postal Service, or perhaps a bookish OMD with soft but driving synths and vocals that are thin but still somehow just right. In fact there’s the ghost of Enola Gay in the chorus to How We Roll and simple keyboard melodies, best described as exuberant pings, thread through many of the tracks. There are no big sounds here, no dirty effects or rampant torch singing, everything is clean and controlled yet the tracks still manage a range of dynamics and create a real sense of momentum.
Dancing in a Minefield and Union Pool start simply then add layer upon layer of arrangement, with those tiny, snapping 80’s drums carrying them along in irresistible crescendos into gorgeous little choruses. They belong to the Michal Nyman /Sigur Ros School of Uplift – you know the thing, music that’s just made for accompanying slow motion film of people running, crying or embracing. Occasionally tracks seem to have the stabbing chord structures of grunge pop acts like Blink 142, that almost ska- feel but with keyboards instead of guitars, and there is some more dance-orientated stuff but always with the sounds softened and on their best behaviour.
There’s a simple, sweet pop aesthetic to it all, and an underrated sense of niceness. On the other hand, Plushgun don’t quite manage the range of The Postal Service, or OMD, bands that could throw in a different vocalist, a new direction or instrument every now and again. The album is tethered somehow to Ingala’s voice, but sitting here writing this while the album is happily dancing with itself in the background, I’m suddenly not sure whether that matters or not.