Clocking in at a snappy 34 minutes, the second album from Dublin one-man outfit Neosupervital seems to have been assembled with the dual intentions of making you shake your groove thang and leaving you hungry for more after the mirror ball stops spinning.
Brimming with ego, Tim O’Donovan is a delightfully bombastic front man, fusing classic disco melodies with electronic laptop wizardry (if international powerpoppers Mika and the Scissor Sisters made tunes as good as the ultra glam ‘Dance With You’, a significantly smaller portion of my time would be spent boiling over with rage in newsagents). Topped and tailed with a pair of fleeting, blippy ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodbye’ tracks, standout moments include the faux-sophistication of the French lines on ‘Distant Light’, the exaggerated sighs on ‘Sky Is Higher’, and everything about disco anthem ‘Do What You Feel’, which boasts a bassline Chic legend Bernard Edwards would be proud of.
Swoonsome instrumental track ‘Then’ makes for a drastic change of pace, but O’Donovan gets right back to the business of boogie with ‘Can’t Be On Your Own’, a long overdue ode to serial daters, pepped up with an insane glam rock guitar solo. I have to admit that for a straight-up pop album, I was expecting more straight-up pop hits, but Neosupervital’s empowering lyrics more than make up for a dud track or two.
Loaded with a funkier, fuller sound than 2007’s eponymous debut, Battery Power proves that there’s room for everyone in the robust Irish music making milieu (Neo’s not the only one who took French, y’know) – even a camp space robot doing the Hustle.
Key Track: ‘Do What You Feel’