In a flash, Joseph Mount’s appetite for the icy element of new wave (Soft Cell, Devo…) took a beautifully light, effective and unifying direction, and we believed that the future of pop belonged to him. Everything on this album brilliantly evokes recklessness: the holiday groove of “We Broke Free,” the sunny melody of “Everything Goes My Way,” the twilight keyboards of “The Look,” the bubbling crescendo of “Corinne”. That’s not to say there isn’t an amazing delicacy in the composition, the arrangements and the production here.
