In Review: Overmono - 'Good Lies'
The Welsh duo's nimble electronica satisfies in spite of some unbecoming flirtations with pop
Doberman Pinschers, a tenacious and intelligent breed of dogs, have graced the covers of several of Welsh electronic duo Overmono’s releases. Starting with 2020’s Everything U Need 12” — their fourth for XL Recordings — the long-muzzled animal has found its way onto nearly every release since, the “Pieces of 8” / “Echo Rush” single being the sole exception. This visual consistency was reflected in the music as well, as the pair dropped fine-tuned, eerily bloat-free tracks with robotic consistency.
Formed in 2015, Overmono, consisting of brothers Tom and Ed Russell, dropped their debut EP Arla a year later. The EP — the first in a trilogy — took Tom’s hard techno beginnings and fused them with Ed’s drum’n’bass roots, while also carrying shades of Burial’s dark, melancholy dubstep. (Mid-EP interlude “C-Life” even repeats the word “dubstep” via a mangled, manically pitch-shifted vocal sample.) Now, seven years and several releases later, the two have honed their sound into a precise, pop-tinged make of electronica that, while undeniably appealing (and undoubtedly bankable), also sands some of the edges off their most gripping musical ambitions.
Given the strength of the pre-release singles — the heavyhearted 2-step beats of “Is U” and the dreamy breakbeat of the title track were particularly potent — Good Lies gets off to a rough start with “Feelings Plain,” easily the worst song on the LP and possibly their entire discography. Opening with pulsing kick drums, the tune slides into glittery, layered vocals that, aided by bright synths, cop too readily from current trends to register as anything besides vaguely familiar.
The dark “Arla Fearn” follows and swiftly offers a course correction with sparse industrial dubstep, overlaid with chopped, pitch-shifted singing. The energy is infectious and courageously creepy, a far more worthy introduction to the duo’s long-awaited full length debut. The song’s sticky wub-wubs reappear throughout the record, most notably on “So U Kno” — a reheated ditty first released in 2021 — whose icy bass throbs dominate the almost 6-minute runtime.
Good Lies is at its best when the duo’s disparate musical backgrounds and acute sense of history bleed together to create something beyond the paradigm of shallow sophistication. (For most critics today, the term “sophistication” carries little meaning outside of a willingness to pander to poptimist sensibilities anyway.) “Sugarushhh” continuously teases a full-on EDM eruption — the kind of rave-inspired sound Ed traded in under his Tessela moniker — while stubbornly refusing to relieve the tension built up by the increasingly nervy acid synths. The St. Panther-assisted cut “Walk Thru Water,” meanwhile, melts Frank Ocean and trap into a rippling downtempo alloy, infusing it with variegated echoes ripped from their arcade of digi-sounds.
Things are less stellar when Overmono transparently go for easy crowdpleasers. The tastefully filleted vocals and sudden burst of digital noise heard on “Cold Blooded” don’t do much to obscure its obvious stabs at mainstream appeal, while “Skulled” relies too much on hardcore nostalgia to add anything meaningful to the genre’s expansive canon. The missteps are few but they illustrate the pitfalls of the duo’s omnivorous, scattershot musicality fairly well — a pervasive characteristic in the world of contemporary popular music.
Even though the scattered duds hinder the album’s flow — following the lush drones of “Is U” with the soporiferous “Vermonly” is nigh unforgivable — it’s hard to argue with Good Lies’ strongest moments. (And to be fair, even “Vermonly” is followed by the beautifully ominous bass and cavernous synths of album highlight “So U Kno.”) As opposed to its middling opening, the record also manages to end things on a muscular note, concluding with “Calling Out,” a spectral amalgamation of wired techno, somber garage, and clipped hip hop bars ripped from British rappers Slowthai and CASisDEAD.
Overmono haven’t exactly been shy about their desire to take their sound to the masses and if the enthusiastic critical response to their debut album is any indication, they are well on their way to becoming the next UK electronic sensation. As with so many acts navigating the diffuse mess that is the streaming-era music industry, going pop seems like the only economically sustainable career trajectory, even for alternative artists (insofar as “alternative” is still a meaningful category in today’s musical landscape).
But the brothers’ pop inclinations — aside from a few moments — don’t feel cynical as much as unevenly calibrated. Sure, some of their algorithm-ready hooks scan as calculated (there’s a good chance they are) but there is also an odd, crystalline beauty to their lean, minimal EDM machine. Time will tell if leaving the genre’s countercultural and boundary-pushing origins behind was worth it.