THE HOLYDRUG COUPLE - Hyper Super Mega

The career of Chilean duo The Holydrug Couple is by now well defined: for almost a decade they've been crafting a dream-pop sound with psychedelic, delicately sixties-tinged shades, inspired yet never overly bold, to the point of earning themselves the label of aurea mediocritas in its original, positive sense.

"Hyper Super Mega" finds Ives Sepulveda and Manuel Parra grappling with the pop structures of the '60s and '70s, with Beatles and Beach Boys at the forefront, though the band favors a more ethereal, diaphanous tone.

Still, the Chileans' new album is a strange creature: the songs, stripped of the instrumental digressions that characterized their previous records, remain anchored in that golden limbo that has always defined the band's output. Nevertheless, The Holydrug Couple retain that naif authenticity typical of bands that don't come from English-speaking countries, and the willingness to engage with the treacherous weave of pop songwriting shouldn't be underestimated — it's a bogeyman for many musicians of a far nobler lineage than Sepulveda and Parra.

From this perspective there are three or four tracks worth noting, like "Ikebana Telephone Line", which shifts the axis toward the sonic pleasures of Electric Light Orchestra (even the title seems like a deliberate homage to Jeff Lynne's group), with piano and synth setting in motion a dynamism that's absent elsewhere.

One also can't overlook the extreme elegance of the ecstatic "I'll Only Say This", a song blessed with the album's most memorable melody, or the intriguing echoes of Procol Harum in "Lucifer's Coat", complete with an organ straight out of "Repent Walpurgis", or of Air in the delightful "Waterfall".

Granted the pleasantly calligraphic nature of most of the tracks, The Holydrug Couple's attempt to freshen up the formula remains commendable; what's never lacking in "Hyper Super Mega" is enthusiasm, and if the closing notes of "Mercury Lake" have one merit, it's containing just enough compelling elements to keep our attention fixed on the band's continuing career.

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17/02/2019