Are You Sleeping On Telefís?
source: Bandcamp
As the idea of PAT626.com began to take shape, I knew immediately I wanted to write reviews. Not of the hot new thing everybody’s talking about, but the new or recent beauties that slip through the cracks. I belong to mailing lists and facebook groups, rub internet elbows with DJs, reviewers, and superfans, and even still sometimes I throw up my hands while previewing a new release and shout, “Why are none of you raving about this?” Since I mainly DJ to expose people to music I love, the best thing I can do now is shout from the textual rooftops and scatter that noise throughout various social media channels.
Telefís topped my “list of bands I don’t hear enough praise for” since December 2021’s “Falun Gong Dancer” used the modest hype the quirky “Mr. Imperator'' generated to launch a sneak attack upon my personal core. Musicalizing awkward silences, the delicate, melancholy vocals slowly placed the brick of each heart-stirring lyric in front of me until I was holed up in a cell with my own self-delusion, laid naked and impossible to avoid. March’s full length a hAon proved this to be no accident; Jacknife Lee and Cathal Coughlan delivered satirical dance-floor burners alongside witty dissections of Irish culture and enough targeted strikes against my sore spots to leave me desperate for another album. Imagine my surprise in learning their second album, a Dó, would drop a scant seven months later. I knew Coughlan was prolific, but were they really going to try and promote two albums in one year?
Cathal Coughlan: 12/16/1960 - 5/18/2022
source: Facebook
An important aside: I don’t read press releases as often as I should. My musical trawling errs towards quantity over quality, trying to find as much good new music as possible while sometimes failing to learn about the people who make it. That’s a mistake I’m correcting now. While reading over the press release for a Dó, I discovered that Cathal Coughlan died in May after battling a long illness. Here I was obsessing over this band and hadn’t even realized half of it was gone. This is it. I’ve spent the better part of a year shouting at people to listen to Telefís and there might be only half an album of unfinished material left after this release.
So there we go. Are You Sleeping? starts now. We can’t miss out on amazing bands, because you never know when the last single will air.
I can see why most dark alternative outlets haven’t picked up on a Dó yet; the three released singles are much poppier than the previous album’s, though two would not be out of place at a goth/industrial club that plays Daft Punk, Ladytron, or Venus Hum (which is every one I’ve ever been to). But to focus solely on the light-hearted guitar riffs and jovial trumpets is to miss Coughlan’s sardonic contemplation of the billionaire space race (“Space is Us”) and the fine line between being popular and generic (“The Carthaginians”). And that’s the kicker with Telefís: even their most polished, tasty-sounding ditties hide a depth which pushes them out of dancefloor pop into somewhere darker.
Furthermore, Jacknife Lee refuses to pick a genre on this album. “Swinging at the Hypnodrome” plucks the nerves of gritty electropop while “Stock Photo Guy (with a Certain Ratio)” throbs with industrial jazz. Then there’s “Strawboy Supernova.” Lee arpeggiates the dirty synth while Coughlan drips out grimy lyrics, birthing a hypnotic blend of Nitzer Ebb and Peter Gabriel-era Genesis which belongs on every dancefloor. Throughout it all, Coughlan, battling illness, reflects upon the past and present with the gentle yet firm perspective of a dying man. From the hopeful-in-the-face-of-panic “Age of Cling,” to the brutal display of the power behind entertainers and politicians in personal favorite, “Circling Over Shannon,” which might be funny if it weren’t so soul-crushing, both men are in their wheelhouse resulting in a unique, timeless sound.
If a Dó has a flaw, it’s pacing. High-tempo hits and club burners pack the top-heavy front of the album, not really slowing down until the soft “Feed The Light,” soothes us like the halfway point of a musical while “We See Showbands” feels like the start of Side B. But we’re not in the middle; Telefís instead hits us with the two strongest tracks on the album and then lets us go with gentle contemplation that feels over too quickly. Then again, that’s their style. Each song spins us around and ends abruptly as soon as it’s said what it wants to say, leaving us hungry for the next track. And so a Dó teases us at the end, leaving no choice but to start the record over.
That might be all I’ve been doing for the better part of a week. I suggest you do the same.
