—————————————————— Gang Gang Dance | Music | Houston | Houston Press | The Leading Independent News Source in Houston, Texas

Gang Gang Dance

It's the nature of the avant-garde to be somewhere just beyond our current understanding of cool and in the ether of uncool — rad, but still fairly confusing. Such is the manner of Gang Gang Dance's genius fifth album, Eye Contact. The Manhattan quintet's fantastically weird psychedelic dance sound has reverberated far beyond their own releases; their 2008 breakout, Saint Dymphna, has been reversioned by every art school band that's had the forethought to rip off something other than Animal Collective. With Eye Contact, the band that brought the rainstick out of upscale-spa obscurity and into the underground has gone trash-picking through the unhip impossible. In their search for mislaid morsels, Gang Gang has returned with ideas that in other hands turned into some of the grossest parts of mid-'80s pop, proving the old adage that one man's soft-rock synth patch is another band's art-rock bludgeoning tool.
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Hopper, Jessica