The ice is indeed melting. While there's heated debate as to whether or not the case for the catastrophic effects of global warming have been overstated, there's no shortage of evidence that the ice caps and glaciers are shrinking. And as the ice melts, a rising tide of electro-pop relentlessly sweeps the globe.
There's so much of it around, it's often hard to get excited by more synth-driven retroness, and a number of the tracks on 'Staring at the Ice Melt' could be, well, any one of a few thousand bands. Fortune simply don't offer much to get excited about: opener 'Under the Sun' has a certain bounce, but isn't anything I've not heard more times than I've had cold beers. 'Since You're Gone' is a bit weak, standard contemporary indie fare with additional synthesisers. Woohoo.
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It's not all electro-by-numbers, though: 'Bully' is propelled by some punchy live percussion and there's some chugging guitar in the mix and points, providing some grainy texture by way of a contrast to the smooth synths. Elsewhere, the jerky vocalisations and numerous changes of style and tempo on 'Fancy Role' are genuinely compelling.
There's a distinctly analogue feel to the synths on tracks like 'Pimp Pop' and the slower 'At Night,' and as a whole, it's not a bad album. Not a great album, but certainly not bad.
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