Télépopmusik, Angel Milk

Let me start here with a little history of one of my personal musical obsessions. I can remember that after I finally heard Massive Attack’s Mezzanine, I searched for what felt like years to find something, anything else that sounded like that. Never happened; it was all either too near to bland old dancefloor junk or too poppy and electronic or whatever else. It didn’t sound quite right. I liked Protection (and later, 1,000 Windows), but nothing could touch Mezzanine. That one album became, for me, the be-all and end-all of trip-hop.

When I put on Télépopmusik’s Angel Milk, therefore, I certainly wasn’t expecting the three Frenchmen (Fabrice Dumont, Stephan Haeri, and Christophe Hetier) and associated cohorts behind the band to have magically replicated the Massive Attack genius. Then “Don’t Look Back” started in, and ex-Wild Colonials singer Angela McCluskey’s husky, Lena Horne-esque warble hit me, and my jaw nearly hit the desk. “Is this it? Is this the album I’ve been waiting to hear, the ‘new’ Mezzanine, more of that perfect nighttime music?” Well…kinda. Télépopmusik do ape the trappings of the Massive Attack crew, particularly on tracks like “Last Train to Wherever” or “Hollywood on My Toothpaste,” where guest vocalist Mau (ex-Earthling, currently in a band called Winter Camp, and whose stories, up on his own personal Website, are pretty damn intriguing) comes off like he’s channeling present and past Attack vocalists 3D and Tricky, respectively.

There’s a little bit of that Massive Attack murk floating in there, too, but where Angel Milk gets interesting is where it doesn’t try to be all dark and moody. “Don’t Look Back” is a pure love song, beautiful and sweet, as is “Stop Running Away” (which features vocals by the group’s third singer, DJ Shadow collaborator Deborah Anderson), while “Anyway” is precious and delicate, like Trembling Blue Stars gone dance. The only “real” dance track here is “Into Everything,” which is more straight-up danceable (not to mention the only track where Anderson’s voice, which is generally nice but not very distinctive, really shines), a chillout track to get people up off the couch and smiling just in time for the sun to come up. “Tuesday,” towards the end of the disc, is similarly bright and sunshiny, and after a slew of “dark” tracks in-between, it really hammers home the point that while Télépopmusik might love Massive Attack’s work as much as I do, they’re better when they follow their own collective muse.

The problem with Angel Milk, sadly, is that after the first five stellar tracks or so, the album takes a nosedive. The aforementioned “Last Train to Wherever” tries to scrape the sheen off of Mezzanine and turn it into gold but can’t hold a candle to the real thing, “Swamp” and “Ambushed” are utterly pointless atmospherics with no substance — both swell promisingly but then collapse into nothing — and “Nothing’s Burning” starts off decently but then just ambles around for a while before it stops. (The only decent instrumental track on here, by the way, is “Another Day,” which closely resembles something off of The Man in the Shadow, by fellow Frenchman Dominique Dalcan, aka Snooze.)

The Tricky-alike track, “Hollywood on My Toothpaste,” sounds like a throwaway from Angels with Dirty Faces, and then “15 Minutes,” the final track on the album, begins with an interesting little bit of crazy poetry/spoken word stuff from Mau…and then dissolves into nothing for another fourteen fucking minutes. Okay, people, new rule: if you’re wasting that much space on an album, then maybe you should rethink how long you want the damn thing to be and go for an EP or something instead. You’re not being clever, you’re not being “ground-breaking,” you’re just being an idiot and you’re wasting people’s time. Oh, and what happens after that fourteen minutes of absolutely nada? Not a damn thing.

The saving grace of the disc is Angela McCluskey. I’m not familiar with the Wild Colonials (although I’m thinking now that maybe I should be), but I’ve fallen hard for that ragged-edged, gorgeously damaged voice of hers. There’s an uncomfortable resemblance to Macy Gray, I’ll admit, but McCluskey’s got a wooziness that sounds more like too much champagne than hard drugs. On “Love’s Almighty,” she sounds like the heir to Beth Gibbons’ trip-hop throne or, hell, Shirley Bassey in her prime — she simmers over the sinister, sweeping strings and plinking piano, a samba-ish score worthy of a James Bond flick, before the whole thing comes shuddering to a halt halfway through and then roars back to life as a Sinatra-style big band blast, less music for spies than for high-kicking Rockettes. It’s incredible fun. McCluskey also saves “Brighton Beach” from being just another exercise in “dark”-ness, her voice nicely complemented by the bleeps and bass bumps beneath; it’s one of the few tracks in the middle of the disc that’s worth listening to more than once.

Taken as a whole, Angel Milk promises a heck of a lot, but it doesn’t deliver more than half of what it could. And that’s a damn shame, because beyond the trickery and mimicry, the members of Télépopmusik sound like they could do a whole lot more. Maybe if they (like me) can just get over the Massive Attack obsession and try for something new, they’ll hit the mark more squarely next time out.