“It’s Album Time” Intriguing but Distracted

By Courtesy Olsen Records

Todd Terje’s choice for the name of his new album, “It’s Album Time,” could be interpreted in a few ways. For one, it’s bold and attention-grabbing, offering no thematic or tonal hints; it’s eccentric and a bit confusing for the same reason, and could also come across as stale or just plain lazy. For all of those reasons, it’s also a fitting title for the Norwegian producer’s debut album, which strangely manages to both intrigue and bore throughout its 12 tracks as Terje meshes electronic and disco to create a spacey, jazzy, and almost purely atmospheric sound, albeit one that tends to lack cohesion.

Each individual track starts off similarly and in the vein of electronic disco; short, pulsing hooks permeate the album predictably, but Terje often crafts them into echoing, twinkling patterns that sound like samples from an archetypal space shuttle’s control panel, such as on “Intro (It’s Album Time)” and “Alfonso Muskedunder.” Eventually, the more classic dance elements are built into the tracks, resulting in a new and refreshed sound, neither disco nor space-rock, that would have maintained its appeal had it been more consistent throughout the album. It’s unexpected to have that kind of mixed environmental evocation from an artist who collaborated with pop-rock classics like Franz Ferdinand and Robbie Williams, and it’s a pleasant twist on nu-disco that still maintains a danceable character.

The problem is that “It’s Album Time” offers an entire collection of such interpretations of dance and disco music that it’s difficult to pay attention to how they come together. “Svensk Sås” would be at home in a Brazilian bar, combining a fiery, jumpy piano hook, a smooth horn part and a cheerful bopping chorus into a track that sounds far more like something off my parents’ old cassettes than a club playlist. “Leisure Suit Preben” similarly falls into the category of easy listening, with an unadventurous piano part that seems excerpted from a student jazz improvisation group. But “Johnny and Mary,” the only track on the album with intelligible lyrics, is a brooding, stripped-down meditation on miscommunication that has nothing close to a counterpart anywhere else on “It’s Album Time.” As glam-rock star Bryan Ferry drawls out in a low croon, “Johnny’s always running around / Trying to find certainty / He needs all the world to confirm / That he ain’t lonely,” a slow, thumping bass beat is accompanied primarily by resonating finger snaps that only emphasize the empty space that characterizes most of the track.

It’s a finely tuned and affecting song, but almost too emotive on an album that is otherwise inhabited by grinding synth and catchy dance rhythms. The closer, “Inspector Norse,” is a seven-minute toe-tapper that could easily be a high-schooler’s summer anthem, an ebullient swirl of energetic production and softened percussion. Unfortunately, the synth isn’t used to equal effect on tracks like “Swing Star (Part 1)” or its unexpected follower, “Swing Star (Part 2).” Here, it builds in insistence until the track is overwhelmed by grating effects that almost cross the threshold of abrasiveness, distracting from the sweetly retro disco beats that would otherwise make for two cheerful homages to dance floors from the ’70s.

The album is an extended tale of that same sentiment of “if only.” If only Terje had been more comfortable with limiting his aesthetic exploration, if only he had focused on the album’s sound rather than that of each individual track, if only he hadn’t added an army of extra elements to what is ostensibly a study in nu-disco, maybe the result wouldn’t have been an album that, despite its title, sounds more like a thrown-together mixtape.

—Staff writer Natalie T. Chang can be reached at natalie.chang@thecrimson.com.