'What Soviet has created is an album so authentic to its ‘80s roots that it more often than not sounds like it could have come out in that era. And with such sheer duplicative tendencies, it probably should have.'
Where you stand on this is probably dependent on how much you value the concept of authenticity and innovation in terms of pop music, or whether you're from the 'if it ain't broke' school of thought. I'm somewhere between the two camps myself. Soviet, a band from Syracuse, New York, released their debut album, We are Eyes, We are Builders in 2001. It was an absolutely flawless update of British Synth Pop of the early eighties. A quite flawless recreation almost twenty years before. The record is so finely crafted that it seems to include all the hits that eluded OMD, Human League and Depeche Mode between 1980 and 1982.
A reasonable question to ask of this endeavour of course might be exactly what is the point of this all. Soviet are not alone in this respect, there are all manner of bands in our age engaged in this kind of pursuit, whether their era is sixties psych, post punk or eighties indie. Sometimes some kind of modern twist is applied but not always and not here. The Soviet sound is an absolutely faithful replication, merely filling out the sounds of those years with a slightly thicker and more realised electronic throb.
Soviet are now almost as far away from their debut as their debut was from the era it drew so ruthlessly on. They still release records that sound very much like their first but the recreation is flawless and doubtless lovingly intended. I like it anyhow. Therefore it's here! Back to the future indeed.
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