This week I listened to Skyscraper by FEX. This is quite the interesting album to me, as it comes from the band that created the "Most Mysterious Song on the Internet" now known as "Subways of Your Mind". It was a very long search but the band was finally discovered sometime last year and I was quite happy about that as I always felt "Subways of Your Mind" was a great song. I'm sort of a closet New Wave/Synth Pop fan. Every song I hear from that genre I always end up really enjoying but I never really explored the genre very much, so listening to this album was quite the treat for me. All the songs are old recordings by FEX from the 80s; some of them are studio recordings and some are demos/rehearsal tapes of the band, but it all has this lofi production which I feel really adds to the atmosphere of a lot of the songs. The album has an impeccable groove to it, sort of like a Krautrock type groove. A driving groove that gives even the slow songs this sense of urgency to them. I found my head bobbing and foot tapping the whole way through. All of the songs themselves are written quite well too, not really a dud on the album. All the songs have pretty synth parts with the driving rhythm section. While there might not be many catchy hooks on most of the songs (aside from the poppier "Jenny" and aforementioned "Subways of Your Mind"), they don't really need them. The songs are carried by the instrumentation and atmosphere of it all. This is a great album to throw on in the background while doing something. I decided during one of my listens to put it on while playing an Arena Shooter game and I had a great time. Certainly an album I plan to revisit for many future listens. 8.5/10
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