Maximum Balloon - Maximum Balloon
- Written by Stef Siepel
The debut album from Maximum Balloon, aka Dave Sitek of TV On The Radio fame, sounds exactly like a typical album with too many guests; euphoric in places, lacking in others, and for probably everyone the void/euphoria will be found somewhere else. Such seems the destiny of all those albums released this year with tons of guests (with perhaps one or two notable exceptions). I hate sounding like a broken record as I’ve said this before in other reviews I’ve done, but the thing is, the singers seem to put quite a stamp on their own stuff. This means that the end result is pretty varied, which also means that some songs might tick your box, while some stuff might not.
Now, I really thought Dave Sitek would be able to pull it off. The man can be seen as a gifted musician and producer, and with his band TV on the Radio he has made two arguably superb albums - albums with their own particular sound. I was kind of banking on the fact that, with such a signature sound, the music would unify all the songs enough to “survive” all the different people singing on it. The latter is not always a bad thing, but if you see Theophilus London, Karen O, and David Byrne on the same list you know that stylistically some differences will be identifiable. This also means that, depending on your own personal preferences, you might like some songs more than others even if it was only because of the way the singer sings. Personally it also seems to me as if Sitek tried to “make” a song for that specific artist, which is unfortunate, because then the sound varies even more.
Don’t get me wrong, the sound is still typically Sitek, but the spectrum is pretty wide. For example, the rather poppy, optimistic sound of ‘Young Love’ (feat. Katrina Ford) is sandwiched between a song with Theophilus London and Tunde Adebimpe. The song with Adebimpe is called ‘Absence of Light’, so if you were indeed feeling optimistic because of that Katrina Ford song, well, you can throw that out of the window right away. ‘If You Return’ features Little Dragon on vocals and is a lovely dreamy affair full of longing. I also kind of liked that preview clip they made for it. After that it gets serious again with Kyp Malone doing the vocals on a slow, drowsy song seemingly drawn around Malone’s falsetto. Add to that the funky ‘Apartment Wrestling’ with David Byrne, and Karen O’s voice, which is so peculiar it is hard to mistake her for anyone else, and you have quite the mash-up.
So I highly doubt this is a great album. However, despite that, some of the songs are just downright excellent. First single ‘Tiger’ with Aku delivering an inspired performance is absolutely right on the money, and I think most of the female vocalists are well chosen and the songs with Ford, Karen O and Little Dragon especially really fit Sitek’s style. I would’ve been more than happy if they would’ve done three songs each. Although they’re all very different voices, they seem to add the same quality to Sitek’s music which gives it a unified feel. I don’t know if Sitek wanted to go that route, but personally I think it is one that fits him perhaps better than the other songs.
Songs aplenty to enjoy then, but probably it is more of a shuffle thing then something else. Some songs I find a lot more enjoyable than others, and the disparity in my enjoyment of it makes it hard for me to listen to the entire thing on end – you simply grow tired more quickly of some songs than of others. When Maximum Balloon hits the mark though, Sitek & co do nail it. ‘Tiger’, ‘Young Love’, and ‘If You Return’ are amongst the best things I’ve heard this year, but the album as a whole doesn’t quite reach that mark.