Cigarette Tricks: What To Download Tuesday: Chromatics

Not unlike the band behind our pick for album of the week last week, Tanlines, this week's album of choice was crafted by a band that specializes in a minimalist and highly stylized approached to electronic pop music. But where Tanlines finds inspiration in the sunny sounds of mid-1980s Afro- and Latin-pop, Chromatics draw from the smokey late-night world of 1970s Italo-disco. Indeed, the group's producer and multi-instrumentalist, Johnny Jewel, is arguably pop music's leading Italo-disco revivalist, playing in two other Italo-pop groups, Glass Candy and Desire, as well as co-founding the Italians Do It Better record label. It has been five years since the last Chromatics' record, their 2007 breakthrough Night Drive, which was not only their first foray into Italo-disco, but it was the first record to feature the current line-up of the band, including the additions of Jewel and singer Ruth Badelet (guitarist Adam Miller is the only original member). That album was great, and since then the legend of the Italians Do It Better scene has only grown. Most notably, after being inspired by Night Drive, director Nicholas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling commissioned Jewel in 2010 to write the score for their film Drive -- perhaps the best of 2011 for my money. While a number of tracks that had Jewel's fingerprints on them were used in the film (including Chromatics' "Tick of the Clock"), the score that he and Chromatics' bandmate Nat Walker composed was ultimately rejected by the studio and Cliff Martinez was enlisted to take over the project. The score that Martinez produced, however, remains heavily indebted to the Italians Do It Better aesthetic. "That's Hollywood," Jewel said in an interview with Louis Pattison of The Guardian, "all the cliches are there, and they're even worse than you already think... I know it's not a nice thing to say, but my score was superior. It was the director's choice, Ryan's choice... but in movie production there's a money side and a creative side and they don't always meet in the middle."

Every review that you read of Chromatics' Kill for Love -- their long awaited follow-up to Night Drive, made available this week for download on Itunes -- is likely going to reference how the band sounds energized in the wake of the whole Drive experience. And it's true. At 17 songs, and over 91 minutes, Kill for Love is the most ambitious record to-date in the Italo-disco genre. It's probably safe to say that Kill for Love will go down as "the White Album" of Italo-disco. That said, the record is infinitely more diverse stylistically than anything yet attempted in the genre. Opening with a melancholic cover of Neil Young's rock anthem "Hey Hey My My (Into the Black)" and closing with the 14-minute ambient instrumental, "No Escape," and then peppering the in-between with New Order-style pop songs, extended instrumentals, and traditional Italo-disco fare, Kill for Love is nothing if not ambitious. And like Night Drive, it's fair to say that Kill for Love works best as background music. It's not something you're going to sit and listen to over and over again, but it's something you might put on over and over again to set a mood. It works like a soundtrack in that way, and it's one of those records that is perhaps best enjoyed knowing it's back story. The record can't help but call-to-mind the noirish loneliness and exhilarating '80s glam of driving through a fictionalized version of L.A. Not that you need to have seen Drive to enjoy this record, and not that this record is a direct response to that world or that it doesn't stand on it's own as great. But some of the best records of the modern era are best enjoyed knowing their back stories -- Highway 61 Revisited, Let it Be, Exile on Main Street, to name just three. Heck, all records (all paintings, all books, etc.) are best enjoyed knowing their back stories. And if the album Night Drive influenced the movie Drive which in turn shaped the making of the album Kill for Love, then, well, good to know. But regardless of whether or not this record makes you feel like you're in a movie or suddenly makes you want to go for a drive late at night, at it's heart it's just an odd, interesting, and ultimately enjoyable record. Tracks like "The River," "Kill for Love," and "Back From The Grave" standout, but it's a collection best enjoyed as a whole. No word yet on the physical release date, but the record label is promising it will be available on double vinyl at that time. Will keep you posted.

Other new releases this week include Justin Town Earle's Nothings Going To Change The Way You Feel About Me Now, the self-titled debut of the Damon Albarn/Flea/Tony Allen collaboration, Rocket Juice and the Moon, and Le Sera's (the solo moniker of Vivian Girl Katy Goodman) Sees the Light. See the full list after the jump.

Chromatics, Kill For Love