After touring in support of their 2007 album, Why Bother?, The Detroit-based duo of Adam Lee Miller and Nicola Kuperus took an extended break from the album cycle. Consequently, ADULT.'s beat-driven, synth-based sound—melodic at its core but ever-so-slightly atonal and abrasive, with a lyrical romanticism that seemed to befit only the grittiest creatures of the night—sort of froze in indie rock memory as a period aesthetic, a nostalgic throwback to a time when people in the urban underground were throwing around words like "dance-punk" and "electroclash." But what's surprising about the wonky synth lines and smiting, deadpan vocals on their excellent return to the studio, The Way Things Fall, is how very fresh and of-the-moment they sound, like something you might hear at a fog-machine-filled cold wave party today, only with an emphasis on clarity of form, instead of hazy subterfuge. Stream the album below, which comes out May 14th via Ghostly International,
Stream: Adult, The Way Things Fall
