That IMA Robot recently opened up for US America label mates Blur somehow manages to explain the band and this record more than words ever could. Wrapped up and served in the same punky and pseudo-anarchic cellophane of tracks like Blur’s ‘Song 2’ and the disastrous ‘Crazy Beat’, ‘Ima Robot’ satisfies any kind of appetite whetted for off-kilter new wave and random, explosive energy.
First exploding onto the US rock scene with debut single ‘Dynomite’, the band have already had one critic exclaim the band are ‘retro and futuristic at the same time’. Confused? Well, so you should be, as this observation makes no sense at all. The critic should have said that whilst Ima Robot trade heavily on the crude, heavy riffing of PIL, Big Audio Dynamite and the Sex Pistols, and the angular, spasmo vocals of John Lydon (‘Dynomite’, ‘A Is For Action’, 12=3 Here Comes The Doctors, Here Comes The Bombs) the sound relies as much on the wiggling electro currents of bands like Devo, Talking Heads and early glammers, Sparks (‘Song#1’, ‘Lets Talk Turkey’ and ‘Black Jettas’). A track like ‘What Are We Made From?’, on the otherhand proves in exactly same the surprising fashion that Blur’s ‘Battery In Your Leg’ proves, that any band who pays this much attention to the archive, can comfortably scale the heights of freshness and originality themselves. The distorted, double-tracked Alex Ebert vocal and the edgy, monosyllabic drum beat provide ‘Ima Robot’ with a haunting and disturbing ‘hot suicide’ bent both musically and lyrically – a combination as unsettling and alienating as anything on Syd Barrett release, and as perversely tender as anything by Joy Division.
That the band consists of onetime Beck backing players Justin Meldal-Johnson (bass, backing vocals) and Joey Waronker (Drums) and picked up a couple dates with the White Stripes on the West Coast in September, kind of ensures that ‘Ima Robot’ will get a fair hearing on both sides of the Atlantic. And with Hot Hot Heat, and Stellastarr* and Interpol having furrowed the field in preparation for their advance, their marvellously vital splicing of new-wave, new romanticism and punk makes it almost inevitable they’ll exploit that opportunity to the fullest.
And with the rousing, swimming chorus of tracks like ‘Scream’ to fall back on, there’s still enough here to remember if they fail.