CD - The Temper Trap - Conditions
The first single from Melbourne four piece The Temper Trap’s debut album Conditions is the kind of heavenly pop hit that can shift both moods and iPods. Nearly a year after it was first released, Sweet Disposition is still brilliantly fresh, as infectious, breathless and timeless as The Smiths’ Ask, or Madonna at her prime. With a refrain of ”a moment, a love, a dream aloud, a kiss, a cry, our rights, our wrongs”, it’s ripe for claiming as a G Day anthem, and it’s also nowhere near the best thing here.
In fact, with its soaring melodies, devotional vocals and killer confidence, Conditions is both a holistic narrative and ridiculously shuffle friendly. The four members of The Temper Trap collaborate on the music in differing permutations, but Dougy Mandagi’s voice is their central tenet. He possesses an over-arching self belief and a pop obsessive’s eye for detail. Stepping through anxieties about death and failure, his lyrics constantly return to faith and ambition, and Mandagi judiciously matches his Jeff Buckley-esque range to these concerns, swinging gracefully from release to gruff statements of intent.
This confidence is clearly shared by the record label folk who hooked the band up with both DJ Shadow and producer Jim Abbiss. Having previously worked with Adele and Arctic Monkeys, Abbiss initially seems to have provided a grande latte sheen that washes away The Temper Trap’s fair trade tone and flavors, but these reveal themselves progressively as the considered track listening oscillates between up and downbeat.
Entire pop empires have spun off from tunes with less charm (and hand claps) than Fader crams into its first thirty seconds, percolating with the sheer thrill of sound and ideas colliding. The Temper Trap’s appeal increases in direct proportion to their agitation and, by the time Resurrection and the DJ Shadow assisted Science of Fear arrive near the disc’s end, they pulse with an energy that’s simultaneously nervous and magnetic and feel so assured and joyous that they almost face off against each other. Fittingly, Resurrection returns from a seeming fade-out, reiterating its anthemic chorus only to have its arse kicked as Science of Fear suddenly makes sense of everything that Arcade Fire has spent two albums trying to pull off.
Conditions does this over and over, the songs folding back and enriching each other; it’s that rare debut where the promise of what’s to come is matched by hitting repeat.
The Temper Trap, Conditions is out now through Liberation Music.
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