Walking on a Dream

Empire Of The Sun are an Australian electronic duo consisting of Luke Steele from The Sleepy Jackson, and Nick Littlemore of Pnau, and after being hailed as the hottest record in the world by Zane Lowe and one of NME’s Top 10 for 2009, they are apparently a pretty big deal.

What cannot be ignored is the cover art for their debut, Walking on a Dream, – a futuristic and extravagant nod to sci-fi and iconic Hollywood movie posters, but to me, just looks like one of the free CD’s that fall out of Sunday papers. Looking past the eccentric artwork and elaborate costumes, you find an album with the promise of perfect sun-drenched, chilled-out pop, but frustratingly, it just doesn’t seem to get there.

Opening track ‘Standing on the Shore’ is soft and laid back, Steele’s vocals lazily drifting overhead, lulling you into a warm, summery coma before hitting you with debut single and title track ‘Walking on a Dream’. This deserves special recognition, with its Daft Punk-esque opening, soft synth/drums and falsetto chorus. It is a track which would be perfect to listen to whilst lying on your back in the sun, without a care in the world – it’s the stand out track of the album. The rest of the first half is sprinkled with other blissful pop gems; second single ‘We are the People’ and ‘Half Mast’ stick to this winning formula, crafting a lazy, psychedelic sound that could easily be compared to a chilled out MGMT.

However, the album takes a turn for the worst at ‘Delta Bay’, with opening vocals sounding like they were provided by a hobbit, it instantly becomes forgettable and sounds like something which would have been left off of Klaxons Myths of the Near Future. This is followed by the instrumental ‘Country’ and ‘The World’, which again just fade into the background, leaving me with the need to start the tracks afresh after tuning out mid-song. Even the wonderfully titled ‘Swordfish Hotkiss Night’, in which Steele has a somewhat peculiar attempt at rapping, does little to re-ignite the poppy hooks that started this album off so well. Album closer ‘Without You’ just comes across as cheesy, and wouldn’t sound out of place as the ‘slow dance’ music in an episode of Saved by the Bell.

In the end, this is not a bad album, just a rather unbalanced one. The second half of the album is a let down compared to the stand out tracks which opened it, often seeming experimental just for the sake of it, or just not seeming to ‘fit in’. It seems that Empire of the Sun need to spend less time on their image and artwork, and more on crafting the great songs that they are obviously capable of.