Although the band has hardly kept quiet in the interim with reissues and the “Are You Listening?” collaborative single, it had been four years since Statik and kaRIN had graced their audience with a full-length album of new Collide material. Perhaps it was this long wait that accounts for the 11 tracks on Notes From the Universe, which present some of the band’s densest and most notably robust production values yet. Elements of ‘60s blues-laden psychedelia can be felt in the sharpened rays of light guitar and organ that resound in “Turn Off Your TV,” or in the grinding grooves or “Are You Better Now?,” while later cuts like the jaunty “Icy Cold,” the swinging lounge jazz vibes of “When All You Crave,” or the sultry cabaret rhythms of the smoky “What Were You Thinking” demonstrate the fuller extent of Collide’s variety of influences, all filtered through Statik’s fierce layers of sophisticated electronics and splashes of organic sounds like guitar and piano. We even get a mangled bebop energy in “Gets to the Heart,” the distortion doing little to dissuade from an inherent pop catchiness, and probably the closest Collide has ever come to truly sounding like Curve. A song like “I Go Crashing” is especially entrancing, if somber, as jangly strums of acoustic guitar mingle with swirling waves of ambient pads, while the martial percussion and icy trickles of guitar eventually give rise to overdriven drums and malfunctioning sequences in the opening “Stardust.” All the while, kaRIN’s breathy and melodious voice remains as seductive and serpentine as ever, always balancing between a vulnerable chanteuse and a mischievous temptress, aided by no small amount of reverb and other minor effects for occasional emphasis.
However, much of Notes From the Universe tends to linger precariously close to the point of excess; songs lasting nearly six or seven minutes are not a new thing for the duo, but there is such a superfluity of lengthy repetitions that one might wonder if Statik and kaRIN are trying to make up for the long absence. “Freak Like Me” is a prime example of this, with the song virtually a complete work by the time three-and-a-half minutes have elapsed… but that’s only the first half of the song, and while the corroded bass tone and washes of feedback in the bridge and the arpeggios and vocal effects of the coda are enticing on their own, there is an almost anticlimactic disconnect that occurs. This applies to every song on the album, but this isn’t to say that Notes From the Universe is in any way tiresome; on the contrary, in fact, much of the band’s appeal over the years has been in how they allow songs to breathe and progress as they will. Ultimately, Notes From the Universe delivers all you could expect from a Collide record, and just a little more – such generosity from a band is deserving of gratitude.
