Dance Yrself Clean: A Review of Lust for Youth's "Perfect View"

From left to right, Hannes Norrvide and Loke Rahbek of Lust for Youth

It's common knowledge, that hype kills an artist. But the hype of one artist in a certain genre threatens to overshadow all the other artists in that respective genre. Daft Punk made a huge comeback with Random Access Memories, a boring and cluttered album of dance/electronic music. It's all people are talking about! Little do they know, is that Majical Cloudz released their excellent second full-length Impersonator, a sparse and emotionally potent electronic album two weeks later. The bland and unoriginal Silence Yourself by London outfit, Savages, is being crowned the pinacle of modern post-punk. But released around the same time, was Vår's No One Dances Quite Like My Brothers. Vår is a Copenhagen supergroup, compromised of members of Lust for Youth(!), Lower, Iceage and Sexdrome. Savages barely scratched the surface of post-punk. Vår created a unique and excellent study of all post-punk.

Enter Lust for Youth. Not a lot of people know about Lust for Youth. They usually perform a lot at events Pitchfork hold in New York, but he's always at the bottom of the lineup. If you were to listen to Lust for Youth, you'd probably grimace, but you'd stick through it, waiting until the end of the song. Most of his songs are two or three notes banged out on a Casio keyboard, with some drum machines placed over them, and then Hannes Norrvide moans into the smog of music he's created. The mixture doesn't sound appealing, but his music reaches sensual and emotional heights. In interviews he  has explained that he's always wanted to make post-punk music, but he couldn't play any instruments apart from his constantly malfunctioning Casio keyboard.

Lust for Youth started in 2009, back when Norrvide wanted to make post-punk music, but with some synth pop thrown in. Norrvide recruited a second member for 2011's Solar Flare. A darkness loomed over that record's pummeling synths, with titles such as "Sickness", "Black Death" and "Taste of Skin". In 2012, Lust for Youth once again became the solo project of Norrvide. He released the pretty great Growing Seeds on the Italian label Avant! over the summer of 2012 (later being released on Brooklyn's very own Sacred Bones in the fall). Growing Seeds was a sonically murky, lo-fi record, with a sense of loneliness throughout it, despite Norrvide citing it as an album about new love and new beginnings.

Because Norrvide enjoys both cheap electronic and punk music, the music he makes himself can be described as being "dance punk" (hence Daft Punk, Majical Cloudz, Savages and Vår being discussed in the beginning of this review). New Order and Cold Cave are obvious influences, but Lust for Youth's music also reflects what his contemporaries in Vår are doing.

That influence may be brought on by Loke Rahbek, the newly added second member of Lust for Youth. Rahbek runs the Danish label Posh Isolation, sings in the violent punk band Sexdrome and is one of the two singers of Vår (he's responsible for songs like "The World Fell" and "Pictures of Today / Victorial"). Rahbek was originally used just to aid Norrvide in performing, but now he helps record as well.

This may add another layer to Lust for Youth's newest record, Perfect View, his second in only six months. The addition of Rahbek may have made the music on Perfect View much more lush and prettier than Growing Seeds with more thought added to the instrumentals. If you caught Lust for Youth's 2012 EP Saluting Rome or his Chasing the Light (7") then you'll be prepared for what awaits you on Perfect View.

Norrvide creates an excellent mix between the emotional, Casio led songs and his more dance heavy ones. His experimentation is where he shines the most. "Another Day" starts off sounding like a track from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack with disco like instrumentation. That's before Norrvide comes in, pleading in his signature monotone, thick Swedish accent ("one more try / another day with you"). On "Breaking Silence" the song achieves the more synth pop aspirations of Norrvide's music, while stripping back that industrial grit. It sounds as if Norrvide is drunkenly roaming the streets of Copenhagen at night yelling "now! / with both my hands / I break the silence!".

The songs that Norrvide sang on, on Growing Seeds were the stronger of the batch of songs. Many of the instrumentals fell short. That's not so much the case on Perfect View. The centerpiece of the album is a towering, 8 minute long club beat with synths and disembodied vocals sputtering over it. The beginning and end of the song features samples of an impassioned preacher. This may add another layer not just to the music, but to Norrvide himself: his relationship with religion. The preacher almost makes you feel you uncomfortable while yelling things like, "he's the only one who can pull you from the dead, filthy muck / Jesus!"

Two of the songs stay true to the signature form that Norrvide's somewhat created. Opener "I Found Love" sounds a lot like "We Planted a Seed", an instrumental from the last Lust for Youth LP, but this time, Norrvide sings over it. The only lyrics are, "I found love / in a different place". On "Vibrant Brother", Norrvide seems to have given up singing at all and just does what sounds like spoken word ("her desire / that's all it was / see the death / fall from her eyes").

The final two songs of Perfect View are where Norrvide and Rahbek are able to balance Norrvide's signature form and his more dance leaning side. "Kirsten" samples film dialogue ("Kirsten's gonna kill me when she sees this") over another club beat, where Norrvide moans in the background. And finally, on "Image", the synths reach skyward and an organ is even included. A fitting ending for an album like this.

What makes the Copenhagen scene so exciting, is the friendship among all the musicians. Everybody is in another band with members of another band. Elias Rønnenfelt of Iceage is the other lead singer of Vår, but his other bandmates perform with Rahbek in Sexdrome. And the other members of Vår and Lower collaborate in the dark, industrial band Age Coin. Rahbek sometimes helps Puce Mary (aka Frederikke Hoffmeier, something like the Scandinavian Pharmakon). It's exciting to completely indulge yourself in a scene, where you watch grainy YouTube videos of Age Coin performing at Roskilde, and search the deep recesses of the web for out of print 7" that Vår and Lust for Youth have collaborated on. And now, Perfect View is a welcome addition to the Copenhagen "family".

Lust for Youth - Perfect View
8.5/10
Recommended Tracks - "I Found Love", "Breaking Silence", "Another Day", "Perfect View", "Vibrant Brother", "Image"