Things to Make and Do

Moloko’s third album found the duo again overflowing with ideas, delivering a suite of tunes that aren’t easy to categorise; there are club-influenced epic-tragic torch songs, warped electro-pop, stripped-down semi-acoustic ballads and a particular dramatic, windswept, dance floor aesthetic, perfected in the slinky melody, seductive vocal, semi-balearic instrumentation and romantic, drive of their hit anthem “The Time Is Now.”  

Producer Mark Brydon’s intricately programmed beats, bleeps and samples are once again happily quirky, with plenty of intriguing sound combinations and neat little production touches. The instrumentation on churning trip-funk track “Mother” is largely unidentifiable, while the twangy synth, clunky, skipping beats and unselfconsciously bouncy rhythms of “Indigo” place Róisín Murphy’s catchy song in a musical place, somehow, somewhere between Suzi Quatro and the Boards of Canada. Studio instrumental “It’s Your Problem” is a plonking, gurning audio melange produced by a drunken android, while “It’s Nothing”’s beguiling melody is framed by a simple, scattered R’n’B beat and a gentle smattering of sampler-processed piano, guitar and organ. A beguiling and clever third outing for Moloko.