My Favorite

I've never really understood the obsession some people have with the music of the '80s, because so much of the music was really painful to listen to. Thankfully a band like New York's My Favorite have managed to emerge from the other side of their obsession as a band with some kind of quality control, or to put it another way, is actually good. A Cult Of One is the second EP in a trilogy that takes Joan Of Arc as their theme - the first was one of the more intriguing releases of last year and the follow-up manages to follow a similar path. It seems to me that with every subsequent EP it gets harder to see the connection to Saint Joan (short of simply dealing with society's outsiders), but that's just fine because the music isn't suffering as a result and that is the most important thing by far. Taking its influences from the likes of New Order and Joy Division, the four songs here are big on keyboards and moody vocals, with more literate lyrics than the world is used to. The music is high on atmosphere, from the sounds of rain that opens the EP on "Le Monster" to the chiming of a musical box on "John Dark (A Simulation)," and, most importantly, it has memorable tunes too. Listening to this and its predecessor is going to make waiting for the final chapter a lot more bearable.