Penny Sparkle

Though lacking standout tracks, this is an icy masterclass in how synths should sound.

They get a little too close to trip-hop for their own good on a few songs, and their widescreen drama is missed occasionally, but Penny Sparkle is still another beautiful reinvention for Blonde Redhead.

Always building and beautiful, their sparse, even minimal, approach lends Penny Sparkle a complexity that's both rich and rewarding in both its inspiration and execution.

If one thing's for sure, Penny Sparkle represents an audible dosage of Xanax-inspired dance music, and because none of us are getting any younger, it's spot on.

Instead of being doomed to tread a certain set of glossy, shoegaze-littered paths, and in that doom come off desperate to change, they search within their well-worn sound for a collection of songs with no aspirations to be anything more than the best at what they are. Now that's some progress.

This is an album that, once consumed, lies dormant in the mind of the listener, ingrained but not at the forefront, playing in the subconscious; more demanding than background music, but short of immediacy.

Penny Sparkle's brisk length works to its advantage: music this glacial just can't be endured for too long. But this isn't to say Penny Sparkle doesn't (possibly) foretell a interesting future for Blonde Redhead; in fact, I'd say I'm hoping more than ever before that the band sticks with this newfangled direction, to see if they can work out the kinks and make the kind of record Penny Sparkle could've been.

Penny feels both sculpted and spontaneous. [Oct 2010, p.112]

Certainly fans of the Blonde Redhead of old may damn Penny Sparkle with faint praise. Yet if Penny Sparkle veers a bit too close to Blonde Redhead meets Sade, it is mostly pleasant, and not for all of us is that word an epithet.

Penny Sparkle is a welcome addition to the group's carefully curated discography. Longtime fans should be challenged to hear the band's growth, while new listeners are implored to seek out past works for comparison.

On the whole, Penny Sparkle won't fulfill everyone's expectations, but few can argue it represents another stage in Blonde Redhead's audacious quest for development, even after 17 years and eight albums of trying.

Penny Sparkle straddles the line between comfort and tension, the woozy synths bleed into one another, the music is warm and enveloping but frequent, unexpected minor chords and bass rumbles mean you can never be as comfortable as you'd wish to be.

But here as elsewhere, the band may have learned to sound like it was drifting off a little too well, because Penny Sparkle tends to glide away from the ear as it's playing.

The album is a masterclass in elegiac navel gazing. [Oct 2010, p.90]

The trio are certainly equipped for the challenge, since they're already experienced purveyors of foreboding, romantic, minor-keyed dreaminess; but their dub-tinged candle-flicker sometimes trades haunting for drab.

Wherever your verdict on Penny Sparkle falls, the album goes to show that even a band with such a strong, distinctive identity can still be a work-in-progress that keeps on striving for bigger, better things, even if they're not there.

Penny Sparkle has strong bookends. [Fall 2010, p. 66]

Cocteau Twins, MBV and Angelo Badalamenti are obvious touchstones for the narcotised, heat0haze beauty of Penny Sparkle, which might stupefy were it not for the stylishly gloomy "Love Or Prison" and the deliciously frost-bitten "Oslo." [Oct 2010, p.87]

A nicely composed mix, no doubt, and one that's often gorgeous to boot, but Penny Sparkle mostly sounds like a band getting complacent with age.

For all its dreaminess, Penny Sparkle is clinical and almost always predictable, despite the exotic murmurs of lead singer Kazu Makino.

So while Penny Sparkle might constitute yet another step forward on the band's musical journey, it's not one that I feel compelled to follow them on.

Given the strength of their earlier work, Penny Sparkle is a big letdown. [Oct 2010, p.104]

Even given the band's fondness for equine metaphors, that's pretty obtuse – but somehow it does say something about Penny Sparkle's failure to satisfy.