Simian Mobile Disco - Temporary Pleasure

(Wichita)

What the world needs now is more Todd Rundgren. Let us give thanks, then, to Manchester’s SMD: an electronic party-pop deuce whose CV name-checks Björk, Muse, Peaches, Arctic Monkeys and CSS.

Their second album hosts a trove of cameos, including Edinburgh’s Young Fathers (on dramatic rap-aria ‘Turn up the Dial’), the Gossip’s Beth Ditto (on sonorous rave throwback ‘Cruel Intentions’), and Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor (on tropical cantata ‘Bad Blood’) – plus the aforesaid Rundgren sample, which illuminates the primitive techno of ‘Synthesise’.

Temporary Pleasure also features one of this year’s most ubiquitous singles: the dystopian consumerist love-song, ‘Audacity of Huge’.