The Naked and Famous: Passive Me, Aggressive You - review

Beneficiaries of much NME hype, not to mention a gong for best up-and-coming band at the magazine's recent awards, Auckland's Naked and Famous may find it hard to translate all that stuff into tangible success outside New Zealand. It's not that Passive Me, Aggressive You isn't fine in its own way. The group's high regard for MGMT, Nine Inch Nails and the shoegaze era has been distilled into a sound that's admittedly derivative, yet packed with interest in the shape of brilliant melodies and layers of dreamy distortion. But their most arresting moments – Punching in a Dream, Young Blood – replicate to a T the ravey, synthy zing of MGMT's Kids and Time to Pretend; thus, despite the ear-flaying but catchy dissonance found on Wolf in Geek's Clothing and singer Alisa Xayalith's breathy stoner-musings on No Way, the overall impression of the album is that the Naked and Famous have arrived rather late to the 80s-retro party.