The growth and popularity of electro pop female led acts and singer-songwriters has revealed itself to us in the likes of Grimes, Charli XCX, Purity Ring and Chvrches recently, so it's not surprising that Danish 25 year old Karen Marie Orsted has created herself a small pre album buzz prior to the release of her debut album No Mythologies To Follow. A wonderful Spice Girls cover a few months back certainly raised interest and here we have 12 full tracks featuring Mo's brand of downtempo synth music to fully assess the hype.
The results are pretty good. Each of Mo's tracks carry an intimate electronic vibe that she expresses with her attractive, welcoming vocal over smooth synth textures and looped, hip-hop inspired drum tracks. Early highlight ''Maiden'' is laced with sleek guitar and piano and the excellent production quality that it introduces is a reoccurring feature on tracks such as ''Waste Of Time''- itself a pretty good indication of Mo's talents with a bitter vocal that is somehow simultaneously lovely and harsh, revealing a side to Mo's personality that's prominent and quite significant to her music; an aura of brilliant coolness.
''Dust'' is another highlight with splashing synth drops that decorate excellent chorus harmonies while ''Slow Love'' provides the most intriguing moment of the album by far, with an excellent disco style beat suits the singer wonderfully and could definitely be explored in more detail in the future. Another contrasting track is ''Never Wanna Know'', a more straightforward indie tune that's led by drums and vocal harmonies which comes off quite retro and recalls Cults.
There are no complaints to be had as such, but there are perhaps a couple of times when No Mythologies slips into a comfort zone as Red settles for being a club like anthem while Diplo's feature on ''XXX 88'' is a building, repetitive track that goes unnoticed among a better group of songs.
As the album closes on a euphoric, triumphant note with ''Glass'', it's clear that No Mythologies To Follow signals the arrival of another talent in this growing sub genre. The most impressive thing about this album is the quality of the production, and Mo has done a great job of assembling a strong team behind the music. No Mythologies To Follow is a good start, and one that showcases an artist liable to improve- Mo is definitely talented enough, peculiar enough and intelligent enough to carve out her own niche, meaning that while there's an ocean of similiar acts out there at the moment, Mo isn't just another to add to the pile.
8.0
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