Gang Gang Dance double down on their style on Kazuashita with mixed results

In spite of their seven year hiatus Gang Gang Dance’s latest LP is no less experimental than their previous efforts, in fact, Kazuashita is as comfortable probing elements of Arabic folk music as it readily engages in the dynamics of Western pop. What becomes clear is that Kazuashita is a record confident in its overall conceptual direction.

For example, in the context of the album, the previously released “J-Tree” and “Lotus” neatly dovetail from one to another in spite of their disparate tonal features. Conversely, “Snake Dub” risks taking the listener on a journey through a landscape equal parts melodic as it is disorienting.

Although such risks often pay off, Kazuashita is an album as dependent on the fibrous tissue connecting track-to-track as any other Gang Gang Dance record Consequently the album often connects its high-points with some of its lowest. For example, the decision to segue the scintillating “Lotus” into the frankly bland “(birth canal)” is a decision as baffling as it is irritating.

In spite of this, the album ultimately delivers on its own momentum with the triumphalism of “Salve on the Sorrow”; a reverb drenched celebration of the band's reawakening amongst post-truth politics and social justice society, which, although sickly, is too idyllic to reasonably dismiss.

Kazuashita sees Gang Gang Dance return with some of their strongest material to date, let down only marginally, by some of their weakest.