Mistake, Mistake, Mistake, Mistake - James Figurine

Mistake, Mistake, Mistake, Mistake

James Figurine
Plug Research Records.

SCQ Rating: 58%

After establishing Dntel, The Postal Service and Figurine (to name the most recent), Jimmy Tamborello now introduces yet another moniker, James Figurine, to his impressive resume. Thrilled by German Minimalism, Tamborello sought to make a purely beat-driven record with all the excess and empty emotion you can throw at a Euro-dancefloor. Yet, as he immersed himself in the project, the man responsible for Life is Full of Possibilities caved and inserted tons of the melodic touches that made him royalty among indie-tronic circles. Studying each song, Tamborello knew his initiative was morphing into something more pop-oriented, and with each beat he could only repeat one word: mistake.

Cool backstory but I don’t entirely agree. Mistake… certainly shows his struggle between Minimalist house and American indie-pop and is therefore unusually bloated for a Tamborello project, but there are still a few hybrids that pass the test. ‘55566688833’ (apparently how you spell love in the cell-phone era) is a marvelous opener, smart-ass and awkwardly catchy, which leads into ‘Leftovers’, another track that impresses and recognizes Tamborello as a serviceable vocalist for electronic music. Flaws are already visible despite these album highlights, as the aforementioned songs would’ve been far healthier at three minutes than the ballooned five minutes they dwindle through, but let’s not forget this is dance music oriented as much toward the dancefloor as home-listening.

What isn’t admissible is ‘White Ducks’, a song that clearly emulates the German Minimalist sound but bankrupts what makes it interesting (focus, texture, progression, etc…). The other examples of this shallow songwriting are somewhat bolstered by vocal contributions, something Tamborello is no stranger to; both ‘Pretend It’s a Race…’ and ‘All the Way to China’ (sung by Morgan Nagler and Erlend Oye, respectively) ground otherwise weightless compositions and render this album hit-and-miss, which is quite better than no hits at all.