Culture

Singer/songwriter Leslie Coulter may be from Seattle, but his heart is in the similarly rainy and bleak northern town of Manchester: ghosts of the Smiths, Joy Division, and a host of largely forgotten acts on the Factory, 4AD and Rough Trade labels are all over the winningly melodramatic neo-Brit-pop of Culture. Even the monochromatic vintage snapshot on the album cover looks like an unused outtake from one of the Smiths' 12" singles circa 1986. Those of a similarly Anglophilic bent will find much to admire on Culture, from the fake strings and Cocteau Twins reverb of the swelling opener "Senorita" to the sweet and sour synth-pop of "Perfect Voices" (think late-era Eyeless in Gaza) and the swelling harmonies and pure pop bounce of the undeniably catchy "Homeward Bound." The only flaw is that once all the Name That Influence games are played out, there's not much left to listen to. There is certainly a place for this brand of '80s revivalism, which is undeniably far more musically satisfying than the likes of the Killers; even the most overtly new wave-ish track, the sequencer-driven dance rocker "2000 Miles Away," which sounds more like Talk Talk than Duran Duran. It's just that even as enjoyable as Culture is, this kind of trick only works for one album.