Album: Neon Neon - Stainless Style (Lex)

What seems like nothing more than a zany idea – a concept record about bad-boy automobile engineer, John DeLorean – actually makes perfect sense. DeLorean's colourful life makes for an intriguing jumping-off point, filled as it was with starfucking endeavours, drug deals gone wrong and muscle cars. What could go wrong?

Well, very little, on the face of it. Gruff Rhys and Boom Bip's Stainless Style blinds you with its surface sheen and multifarious hooks and it has to be said that, weak Yo Majesty! guest spot, 'Sweat Shop' aside, every track here could be a megahit. In 1985, at least. There are some genuinely great pop songs here – the paranoia-wracked electro-funk of 'Michael Douglas', 'Luxury Pool', on which Fat Lip paints DeLorean as a kind of Frank Lucas of the car industry and, best of all, 'I Told Her On Alderaan' which acts as the best argument for John Hughes resurrecting his career, if only to have this soundtrack the prom night sequence – but Stainless Style never fully gels.

Why? Well, the musical styles are so disparate and the sequencing so off-whack that the conceptual ruse proves to be counter-intuitive. Sometimes, it's almost as if there are two albums playing simultaneously. I appreciate Rhys' and Bip's devotion to 80s nostalgia while having one foot firmly planted in the here-and-now, but the power pop and electro never totally coalesce. So while Stainless Style features some of the finest pop moments in recent years, it ultimately serves as proof that a great album always has to be more than just the sum of its parts.

http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=3525&band=2177

Single: Neon Neon - I Lust U (Lex)

'I Lust U' is the third single from Neon Neon's (Gruff Rhys and Boom Bip) forthcoming John DeLorean concept album, Stainless Style and it's one of the strongest examples of the pairing's retro-futurist schtick. Synths fart and an 808 vamps about and it's all very 1983. In fact, it recalls C-Bank's seminal 'One More Shot' at times, only not as good (Bip, as good as he is, is no John Robie).

What almost propels 'I Lust U' to full-on greatness is the warm tones of Rhys' muse of late, Cate Le Bon. It's no coincidence that her verse now opens the track (in the early version, Gruff's did), given how ubiquitous the Super Furry Animal has been of late. It's a smart move as music this knowingly mechanical needs a touch of humanism. 'I Lust U' is fun and quite addictive, no more no less and sometimes that's no more than you can ask for. That and a kicking drum machine break anyway.

http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=3505&band=2177