Over The Atlantic - Dimensions

Rating:

* * * *

Bevan Smith has been the name behind some of the most unique and oddball music to come out of New Zealand in recent years with the beautifully minimal beats-and-pieces of Signer and Aspen, and the meandering tunes of Skallander.

In Over the Atlantic, the New Plymouth-born producer teams up with singer and songwriter Nik Brinkman to conjure up pop music that sounds like the best thing to come out of the mid 80s, 20 years on.

For this reason

Dimensions

initially sounds a little coy, sometimes flaky, and like you can't take it seriously.

Some of the lyrics are cheesy, but mostly, such as the great line "it's like a motorway in the middle of the night you don't know where you are" from

Celia

, they are delivered deliciously deadpan with a fun-loving and cute cleverness.

While there's nothing as pure pop as Human League's

Don't You Want Me

, because Over the Atlantic is too understated for that,

Dimensions

is more in the vein of that old band's more macabre moments like

Being Boiled

from the early 80s.

And once songs like the

Disintegration

-era Cure sound of

Growing

, the Human League-meets-Orchestral Manoevures In the Dark-influenced

Post Production

, and the melodic grind of

Loveless Devotion

take hold, you can't help but love it like you did Scritti Politti in the mid 80s.

Scott Kara