The Radio Dept. | Passive Aggressive: Singles 2002-2010

Most Likely To: make you reconsider the cheese of other eras.

Sweden’s The Radio Dept. has taken an odd but engaging journey over the past decade, progressing from an excellent but fairly typical noise-pop band to an excellent, decidedly atypical band mixing noise-pop with the decidedly unhip sounds of 1970s lite-rock and ‘80s post-New Wave pop. Why exactly The Radio Dept. felt the world needed something as bizarre as a combination of Robbie Dupree and Ride is anyone’s guess, but thank God they did. As ghastly as that recipe sounds in theory, in practice it’s turned out to be pretty damn tasty.

On the heels of last year’s pretty excellent Clinging to a Scheme comes Passive Aggressive, a two-disc singles collection from The Radio Dept.’s second decade of operation. The discs are separated into A-sides and B-sides with the A-side disc predictably the stronger of the two, but both discs feature a ridiculous amount of excellently noisy yet smooth poptones.

Disc one kicks off with the fuzzed-out “Why Won’t You Talk About It,” which is all well and good but frankly nothing all that special – had The Radio Dept. stayed put with their original sound, it’s likely no one would be two worked up about a career retrospective. But the second track, “Where Damage Isn’t Already Done,” showcases the band’s knack for sublime pop pretty decisively with a guitar line yanked straight out of God’s subconscious.

They then pause their ascent briefly for “Annie Laurie,” the only boring song in the whole collection, before returning to their so-far-nonstop upward arc. “Pulling Our Weight” is built on a melancholy bassline so adorable it ought to be featured in next year’s Puppy Bowl, while “The Worst Taste in Music” has got to be a candidate for the least autobiographical song title in pop music history.

“We Made the Team” marks the first appearance of ‘80s style pop in the proceedings, sounding like something Talk Talk might have recorded if they’d continued in the vein of “It’s My Life” instead of going all sophisticated and aural-wallpapery. The three tracks featured here from Clinging to a Scheme are the full flower of that sound, and would make great bridge tracks for anyone trying to figure out what might fit in between Danny Wilson’s “Mary’s Prayer” and Slowdive’s “Alison” on a mixtape.

The songs on the B-side disc are not as uniformly excellent as the A-sides, but they’re more wide ranging. “Liebling” is a frantic but tuneful bit of noise, while “You and Me Then?” feels like Ultravox on those times they got all morose and piano-ey. There are several instrumentals tossed into the mix, and even the songs with vocals don’t always feel like they need them. “Mad About the Boy” visits the neighborhood where Moby’s ambient work resides and the subsequent “Closing Scene” plays like a krautrock version of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time.” The closing song on the collection, “The One,” is built on a rhythm that sounds like a 45 of Hall & Oates bouncy “You Make My Dreams” played at 33.

It’s an appropriate note for The Radio Dept. to wrap up Passive Aggressive on, a combination of hip and decidedly very unhip sounds packaged together in ways that shouldn’t work but do. Right now, The Radio Dept. have staked out a territory no one in their right mind would have wanted to occupy, but they’re proving that even the most undesirable hybrids that people might think up are capable of producing beautiful results in the hands of a band with talent and vision.

Listen to “Never Swallow Fruit Dub by Pistol Disco” from The Radio Dept.:

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