Album Review: Grum - Heartbeats

Relentlessly chipper, the debut album from Leeds-based Scotsman Graeme Shephard AKA Grum is so summery and hook-laden it makes his primary influences Mylo and Daft Punk seem somewhat low-key in comparision. As far from the deepest listen of the year as imaginable, Shephard rarely diverts from the instant gratification as provided by recent singles 'Runaway', 'Heartbeats' and 'Can't Shake This Feeling' over the course of the album. Heartbeats carries exuberant 80's vocal samples, beats constructed for their familiar simplicity and minimal, repeated escapist lyricism, thematically kissing the sky as opposed to wallowing in dirt or any sort of angst whatsoever, resolutely falling upon the Justice/Air/Avalanches side of the electro fence. Whilst alt.dance figurehead James Murphy sang earlier this year of not doing hits, Grum's manifesto is unashamedly populist, knowingly stupendous and possibly disposable, given time.

There's a great sense of tingling excitement carried throughout the album, and it's every part the sugary 50-minute slice of massive euphoria early releases and remixes have suggested. The pace barely drops from high-octane 80's-borrowing futurism throughout, but those looking for angst and complexity would probably do well to look elsewhere. A purist-irking cover of David Bowie's 'Fashion' is bound to split opinion, and like the majority of album is fun on first listen, but upon closer inspection sounds exactly what a trashy electro-pop remake of said-song looks like on paper. Generic electro-pop rears it's head on several occasions during the album, most notably on 'Power', with it's 'I Feel Love' bassline, heavily-reverberated snares and 'music is the power/music is release' refrain.

For an album as unashamedly pop as Heartbeats, it's not at all surprising that the standout moments comprise the tracks already lifted from the album. 'Heartbeats' is gloriously shiny addictive dance music that tingles with warmth, building from a basic uptempo electro beat and simple Casio-esque hook to something of epic proportions, overheating with melody and lustre, not a million miles away from the aesthetic of M83, and Shephard's reported favourite tune of all-time, 'We Own The Sky'. Meanwhile, 'Runaway', the album highlight, is pure serotonin reproduced in musical form. The audacity level is not lowered until way into the album, at Track 8. 'Turn It Up' could be mistaken for a long-lost Madonna single with some ease were it not for the contemporary production, welding old-school synth sounds with meatier, modern day percussion which could well date faster than the now tawdry-sounding production techniques it was meant to update. 'Want U' more or less halves the tempo of it's preceding tracks, an echoey, electro march of swirling Commodore-64 motifs, the album closing in more reflective but nonetheless beaming, Balearic fashion on the final three tracks.

As a body of work, Heartbeats is ineffective unless the listener is in the giddy, amorous mood that permeates the album. The constant sunniness loses potency over one sitting, but consumed in the right circumstances, it's the lifting party/beach album it was clearly designed to be, unpretentious but hardly the kind of complicated album that reveals it's charms over time - if it's not appreciated immediately, chances are it never will be. With the potential to irritate as much as uplift, and not enough shade to complement the glaring light, Heartbeats is best appreciated in bitesize doses.