Lemaitre – Fast Lovers

Your avocado toast is burning

Lemaitre, a Norwegian indie electronic duo with millennial pop stylings and maximalist production is out with their latest album Fast Lovers. Lemaitre consists of Ketil Jansen and Ulrik Denizou Lund, and their sound is a mixture of electro house and happy go lucky indie pop, and while not challenging or fresh, the production is polished, well-made and will appeal to the masses.

The opening track “Fast Lovers” opens with soothing ukulele chords and leads into a mishmash of easy going yet punchy drums, buzzing synth bass and competently sung vocals. The chorus features high pitched, heavily effected singing, which gets tedious and overpowers the track. “Smoke” has nice dynamics, going from cool crooning and funky drum work to loud and obnoxious brass stabs, flatulent bass synths and pitched down vocal chops, all clichés. The vocal quality and fit and finish of the mix are the standouts here, and even though the lyrics are one dimensional, they’re definitely more interesting than your standard EDM fair.

“Better Now” features playful production, cutesy synths and bright female backup vocals that all fit together nicely. The production isn’t overbearing or cliché, and even though the vocals can be a little much, the low pass filter applied to them helps to curve any overpowering. On the other hand “Big” is a major key happy go lucky song but with a bored to tears “nah nah nah” chorus which sounds like an attempt to score a placement in a Honda commercial. Fortunately “Little Things” is more ambitious and grandiose, pulsing emotional strings and passionate singing open to an epic chorus with massive drums and millennial “woahing.”

Fast Lovers is a successful attempt at radio indie-pop. There is a lot of effort put into the production and Lemaitre actually try to change up their production between songs. All these tracks have solid structure, dynamics and pacing, and while a little vanilla and at times plain cliché, the music still works and will probably appeal to a lot of young people looking for some chill party music.