Jennifer Touch
Midnight Proposals
★★★
FATCAT. DL/LP
Germanic darkwave revivalism delivered with a wry smile.
Engaging with Jennifer Touch’s music is like climbing into a time machine and keying in ‘1980’. Dresden-born Touch divides her time between Berlin and Brighton, tapping into the creativity of both cities. Midnight Proposals is an intense blast of neo-darkwave, motorik rhythms and early-’80s synth-pop, where New Order, A Flock Of Seagulls and even Billy Idol meet. It’s also laced with knowing humour; Touch’s voice is full of Teutonic froideur but when its pitch is twisted into something bassier, her songs suddenly become a female/male conversation. It’s at its best when tempos are dialled down. That’s especially true of Shot Shot, where setting the ladled-on vocal echo to a lurching, off-kilter rhythm recalls the lo-fi electronic moods of Arthur Russell, while the rousing, paranoid proto-techno of Twisted is looking for a John Carpenter movie to inhabit. Dark and doleful it can be, but often deliciously fun too.