Disclosure - Moog for Love

Pitchfork 60

Coachella can be a little bit like high school—there are the cool kids, the rich kids, the nerds, the outsiders, the stoners, the bros, all splitting off to head bang at Rancid, pinball at Jack Ü or snake dance to Christine and the Queens. But this year, Disclosure was a magnet, drawing all the cliques together into one nation under a virtual disco ball: Goodwill greased and festival irritability eased by the molly caps swallowed an hour earlier with $13 beers, the pulsating throng was united in its love for Howard and Guy Lawrence’s expert blend of sleek pop and those big, warm and happy belted house hooks of the ‘90s.

If Moog for Love, the three-song EP the brothers surprise-dropped last week, is any indication, the thrill isn’t quite gone, but it’s definitely not the same. Granted, that’s putting a lot of pressure on a project that clocks in under 16 minutes, but on the heels of the somewhat-underwhelming, Caracal, I expected Disclosure to aim a little higher than the serviceable stuff piped into the pool area on a weekday afternoon at the W in Hollywood.

Swirling together bright, blissed-out yacht-party synths and sampled, accelerated vocals from George Benson that flirt with Motownphilly, the tropical title track is the clear standout on Moog. Submerging the vocals midway through the track, you can almost hear waves cresting and, consequently, feel the surf foaming around your feet, so who cares if it sounds a little like Now That’s What I Call Ibiza: 2001?

“Boss” is darker, cooler and more elegant, yet there’s nothing so special about it. It certainly doesn’t compare to the sexiness of the similarly slinky “F For You.” Still, the real problem on the EP is “Feel Like I Do,” which samples Al Green’s “I’m Still in Love With You.”

Last summer in an L.A. Times profile, Guy yawned, “The same old bass lines, the same old samples. We’re a bit bored by it.” Careful throwing shade—“I’m Still in Love With You” is a beautiful song, but it’s overplayed, and way too overplayed to be sampled in such a straightforward way. Apparently, Guy just discovered the record, but the littlest bit of Googling should’ve revealed that it’s one of the most popular soul records of all time. As it stands, “Feel Like I Do” simply speeds up a snippet of Green’s vocals and shuffles along without any real purpose. What’s the point?

The same could be said for the whole EP, which simply feels uninspired. Nothing is immediate or necessary, and that’s a strange thing to say when talking about Disclosure, the guys who released Settle, one of the best dance albums of the decade. It's well-appointed, but mediocre, like the kind of person who gets invited to Puff’s white party: no longer a trendsetter, just rich.