The Whitest Boy Alive "Golden Cage"

The name is off-putting to be sure, and no doubt meant as a preemptive "shhhh" to anyone thinking that this project, helmed by coy pop savant Erlend Øye, is indicative of a desire to delve into the realm of soul any more than Gang of Four's Entertainment or The Clash's "Lost in the Supermarket." But where GoF and The Clash were drawing from disco with an ideological agenda, Øye is dancing alone to Chic with the blinds drawn. On "Golden Cage" (mp3), the polite but propulsive bass, alone with the skittering drums at first, only gingerly touches its 70s reference points, buttressed by the massive amounts of space left in the mix, as if the band were playing 15 or 20 feet away from one another in a massive, stark white room. Once Øye's plaintive voice enters the mix, though, it becomes clear that The Cure is a more fitting reference point---and the reluctant dance music makes much more sense when placed against lyrics like "so, of course I miss you and I miss you bad, but I also felt this way when I was still with you."

The Whitest Boy Alive's website is here, and Myspace is here. Their album Dreams will come out in September.