Tulipomania

Boy Crisis sound like what would happen if MGMT, Empire of the Sun, and the Klaxons all got stuck in a lift together and decided to make something out of the situation. Five of them, out of New York, carefully and methodically extending the mutation of nu-rave and the biggest hits of the eighties and nineties into something that felt, at least across the summer just passed, exactly right for Berlin dancefloors full of chaotic teenagers and people who wished they still qualified as chaotic teenagers.

Their debut album Tulipomania came out in the UK last week, and the lead single "The Fountain of Youth" has been following me around like a debt. It showed up in my head on the morning commute. It was there when I brushed my teeth. It’ll probably be playing in whatever passes for my dreams sometime this week, knocking politely on a cloud-shaped door in a country I only visit unconscious.

Tal, Alex, Victor, Lee, and Owen haven’t invented anything new here—they’re operating well within a genre that’s already been thoroughly mapped—but invention isn’t really the point. The point is rotation value, and this thing is going to live on every cramped and sweaty winter party playlist for the next four months. What I’m actually waiting for, underneath all this, is for something genuinely new to land. Something that breaks the pattern rather than refining it. Nu-rave has been due for either a successor or a burial for a while now. Boy Crisis are good at what they do. I just want someone to do something else.