Sex Bomb

Rare is the album that simply makes you throw up your hands in disgust and consider trading in the cachet of music criticism for the alluring quiet of the garden report. Electronic musicians have been bringing writers within shouting distance of that limit lately, with the DJ-as-studio-artist pushing them closer still. Nympho, Armand Van Helden’s first full studio album in about 5 years, might just be their key to self-imposed musical exile.Van Helden’s recent work has brought to the forefront a healthy respect for rock, incorporating electric guitar and prominent live-sounding basslines. On Nympho, however, he puts those up against some terrible lyrics and vocalists, most notably the faux-screamo stylings of Virgin Killer. Just about everything here sounds like the Prodigy without the big-beat energy, or LCD Soundsystem without a finely honed sense of irony. This is less club material than it is stilted industrial music.

What’s worse, you can’t separate Van Helden from his DJ legacy. Without the context of a continuous mix or the length of a vinyl remix, even recent hit singles and album high points “Hear My Name” and “My My My” sound lost. Hell, even swiping a song title (“Brainwashing”) from that dreadful new Daft Punk album is just asking for trouble. Listening to Nympho, you half hope a hidden cameraman will pop out from somewhere and gleefully announce your Armand Van Helden has been replaced with Lords of Acid crystals. Sadly, it’s never going to happen.