Many artists aim for the dizzy heights of the XX when making minimalist, atmospheric music and fall dreadfully close to making GCSE music compositions. Austra, with their Florence and the Machine sounding vocals and beautifully delicate electronic melodies, avoid the sleep inducing branch of their genre, opting instead for a mostly entertaining and interesting variety.

The album on the whole creates a stunning soundscape that edges into sexy, heartfelt and euphoric simultaneously. From the heavy electronic beat of ‘Angel In Your Eye’ to the more gentle opener ‘We Were Alive’ there is a thread of similarity holding them all together whilst giving the freedom of movement to give each song a uniqueness. It is particularly exciting to hear huge electropop ballads like ‘Future Politics’ with a frustratingly catchy chorus that you will be singing for days. Likewise ‘Utopia’, although slightly more understated, has a delightful selection of “ooo’s” to sing along to.

The success of the album is tinged with cringe at times when the lead vocalist seemingly inhales a fair amount of helium and launched her voice fifteen octaves too high. The introduction to ‘I’m a Monster’ is almost ridiculous because these vocals and the chorus of the otherwise fantastic tune ‘I Love You More Than You Love Yourself’ is significantly stained because of it. That said, there are other times when the vocals are almost trance inducing and absolutely stunning; namely ‘Beyond A Mortal’.

Before you can focus too much on the few smears on the soundscape of ‘Future Politics’, ‘43’ has wrapped up (it has to be said way too modestly) and you will have a strange compulsion to listen to the whole thing again.

Ben Roberts