Outrun

Too much of Kavinsky's debut LP is overly repetitive, and little of it leaves any lasting impact. [Mar-Apr 2013, p.100]

Outrun is exactly what it aspires to be: a fun retro-pop-dance album for those who like to drive fast through cities at night, perhaps behind a pair of sunglasses.

Once you’ve finished Kavinsky’s OutRun, you’ll want to buckle up and ride again.

The main reasons to drop a quarter into this video game on wax (or digital download) are the sexy robot song "Nightcall" (which was featured prominently in the film Drive), the dubsteppy victory theme "Protovision," and the assurance that no matter what cool bits of the present are employed, the fetishizing of that 16-bit swagger will remain solid and inspired.

The details of Kavinsky's intended narrative are blurry, and possibly nonsensical, but he succeeds in making an album that suggests that it's the soundtrack to something, and at least making it clear that it has to do with cars and the 1980s.

There's a grandeur and purity of intent to the whole doofy concept that prove hard to resist. For Kavinsky, B-grade electronic '80s gunk is rocket fuel, and it makes Outrun soar.

Perhaps the most rousingly, entertainingly, ridiculously dumb record that 2013 will have to offer.

This album really shouldn’t work. That it does is down to Kavinsky’s painstaking production and his dark vision of the place where rock and electro meet.

A lot of the magic of Kavinsky was the box freshness of his reimagining of the past, but across these 13 tracks the allure of Beverly’s Hills Cop high-tops and alien blasting game soundtracks begins to sound tired and worn out

It’s not perfect--a couple of tracks slightly overdo the asthmatic-sounding compression--but mainly it’s a really impressively consistent and well-structured listen, and definitely worth the wait.