More Cheese

There’s always been something borderline
cringeworthy about Toronto electronic producer Deadmau5 (pronounced
“dead mouse,” duh). It’s not just that great, gimmicky light-up mouse
head he wears for the first few minutes of his shows (and, seriously,
just the first few minutes?); it’s that this mouse has a taste for
cheese, specifically that of the progressive-house and embarrassing
vocal-collab’ varieties.

On new album For Lack of a Better Name, Deadmau5 (born Joel
Zimmerman) uses big, fat kick drums (and filter-flattened hand claps
and sonar-pinging percussive synths) to lay solid foundational grooves
and persuade the appropriate kinetic response, but the tracks
occasionally drift into trancey tedium (sounding sweet enough but
unmemorable). The album is painfully hampered by its back-to-back
sequenced pair of vocal tracks “Ghosts ‘n’ Stuff” and “Hi Friend!”

The former features floating, hollowed-out vocals that aim for
big-room-anthem status but lack any lyrical or melodic hook worth
singing along to, or even just listening to for that matter. (Its
companion track, “Moar Ghosts ‘n’ Stuff,” is thankfully free of vocals,
but it does boast a rather B-grade, Justice-style distorted synth and
organ riff.) Way, way worse is the breathless, brainless hiphouse
rapping of one MC Flipside on “Hi Friend!”—the verses aim for a
kind of unending, ecstasy-peaking build, but even with said substance,
I imagine it would sound utterly goofy and grating.

The nonvocal tracks that surround these awful would-be singles
provide more rewards and less wincing. “Bot,” for instance, begins with
a big, bit-crushed beat, then accrues ever-increasing swarms of
flittering, arpeggiated synths, until it breaks, washes out, and begins
the cycle again, only this time with just a hint of hand percussion and
cowbell. The latter half of the album is fine, if sometimes
forgettable, rave fodder—tense, synthy build; spacey, melodic
break; lather, rinse, repeat—but Deadmau5 has run this maze
faster, harder, and better before, as on last year’s Random Album
Title.