ADULT., Why Bother?

ADULT. is a duo from Detroit (Adam Lee Miller and Nicola Kuperus) that, appropriately enough, plays electronic music. ADULT. recorded Why Bother, their fourth album, after a third member left the group. Their beats use lots of distorted keyboard and synth loops, which makes them heavy and intense, and Kuperus’s vocals add even more tension.

It’s an interesting idea, but it doesn’t always work. Too many of the beats sound the same. The duo likes noise-filled beats, but on a lot of the songs, there’s no break in the beat or change to a different texture or anything to change things up. And when everything has such intensity, you need to occasionally bring things down a bit, or else it saps the energy (like with Rage Against the Machine). They change things around on a couple of songs, but it’s not nearly often enough.

There are a couple of good songs here, though. The best one here is “Plagued by Fear” — it has enough variety that it keeps your attention, and the dynamics of the beat change between the verse and chorus. It’s appropriate that the track is the best song here, because “Plagued by Fear” also describes their sound and feel, although this beat isn’t like the rest — it’s much less fuzzy than the others here. Is it good that the best song here sounds the least like the rest?

The other good song here is “Inclined to Vomit.” It’s more in ADULT.’s normal vein, with lots of heavy, distorted synths; there’s this great, oppressive, dissonant synth riff that goes around and around and penetrates your skull every time it comes in. The tension-and-release at different points makes it really dynamic and gives life to the beat. It also gives life to the vocals — they have the most spirit of any song here.

Kuperus and Miller have a style that’s distinctly and peculiarly theirs — there aren’t many bands that like the disquieting beats in which they specialize. If they can just focus on the craftsmanship, they’d really have something striking. They’re definitely worth keeping an eye on.