As any genre’s unofficial 10-year grace period allows, it is now acceptable to be nostalgic for mid-2000s electro, which exploded around the time of Justice’s first album, Cross, in 2007. It had its lineage in Daft Punk’s filtered house but added the brash swagger of rock. Justice’s remix of Simian Mobile Disco’s We Are Your Friends defined nightlife; their Parisian label Ed Banger was the hippest crew. After a lukewarm second album, Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay are back with their vacuum-packed leather jackets and porno taches, now creating the sweeping soundtrack to a 1970s erotic film by way of Tron. Funk, disco, gospel, soft rock, prog and (that old chestnut) “cinematic” synths mingle in their newly refined pop laboratory: Safe and Sound puts their love of a choir to good use with a mercuried slap bass; Pleasure has another cracking, crotch-thrusting bassline and dreamy falsetto; Randy is perhaps the best running track released this year. And yet, Woman is surprisingly banger-lite, a totally serviceable one-night stand rather than a torrid love affair. Maybe give it another 10 years.
