From the outside,
the Neighbourhood's fourth album, 2020's loosely conceptual
Chip Chrome & the Mono-Tones, may appear to be their weirdest album to date. However, while there are certainly light,
Ziggy Stardust-esque sci-fi elements to the production, the record is one of the Los Angeles outfit's most accessible, rife with pop hooks and emotive lyricism. Centered on lead singer
Jesse Rutherford's alter ego, the silver-painted Chip Chrome character, the album feels like the improbable love child of
David Bowie and
Justin Timberlake. In some ways, the record brings to mind
Zooropa-era
U2 as
Rutherford plays the love-lorn spaceman troubadour Chip Chrome, ambling his way through a contemporary pop landscape much in the same way
Bono filtered his own rock charisma through characters like the Fly and MacPhisto. Musically, the album is just as inventive, as the band deftly move between cheeky '70s space-folk anthems like "Middle of Nowhere," slinky '80s-style R&B like "BooHoo,' and shimmering
ELO-esque ballads like "Cherry Flavored." We also get the wonky, space-cowboy folk of "Hell or High Water" and the soft-focus
Neil Young psychedelia of "Tobacco Sunburst." Equally compelling are cuts like the dusky "Silver Lining," with its
Fleetwood Mac-meets-
Flaming Lips vibe, and "Devil's Advocate," with its wicked,
Michael Jackson-meets-
Beck groove. There's also "Pretty Boy," with its moody '60s exotica flourishes, in which
Rutherford croons of love in a time when leaving Earth seems like an option we might all wish for. He sings, "Even if my heart stops beating/You're the only thing I need, ooh, with me/Even if the Earth starts shaking/You're the only thing worth taking, ooh, with me/Even if the sky's on fire/Got you here, it's alright, ooh, with me." Of course, all of this genre-bending, sci-fi fun would simply be pop theatrics were it not for the band's knack for crafting memorable songs, and
Chip Chrome & the Mono-Tones is a journey through
the Neighbourhood's musical cosmos that's worth taking. ~ Matt Collar