Regular readers of Time Out will already be intimately familiar with Pop Levi. Whether they like him or not. Even occasional readers will most likely have read at least four pieces about him. In fact, even if you’ve just come over to London from Lebanon for the first time and have only ever read Time Out Beirut before (relaunching this week, fact fans!), you’re probably already sick of hearing about him by osmosis. Suffice it to say, his 2006 solo debut, ‘The Return to Form Black Majick Party’, remains a Time Out favourite, and we were only further enamoured of him by his sprawling, outrageous live shows. Sadly, the general public didn’t quite take him to their hearts with such vigour. This, combined with Levi’s short attention span, may explain why the follow-up is less grounded in the world of psych-freakery and more reminiscent of those heady post-punk days when prog bands discovered synthesizers and short songs.
Levi’s stock in trade is a Bowie-ish talent for assimilating passing forms of music through his own particular prism. While ‘Never Never Love’ gorges on layers of overdriven glam guitars, showy processed beats, white-funk synth lines and sunshine melodies, the constants are his super-castrato voice, allegedly scrying-inspired lyrics and pumping each song with hooks galore. All these are in evidence on recent bona fide, almost-hit ‘Dita Dimone’, which is probably the (commercially) strongest cut on the album. Meanwhile, the Buggles-go-Yes vocoder confectionery of the title track and the fuzzed-out, funky ‘Fire on Your Feet’ artfully demonstrate Levi’s knack for pulling the rhythm rug out from under his own songs and keeping the listener guessing.
