Chicago is not a place one would normally associate with breezy summer days. Nevertheless, Illinois natives Elliot and Natalie Bergman (a.k.a. Wild Belles) attempt to evoke the lazy beaches of the Caribbean with their reggae-drenched debut album.
Isles offers a mixture of off-beat Jamaican rhythms and ska horns fused with the subtle darkness of trip-hop electronics. Moments of Orb-esque ambient dub and Portishead eeriness peer from behind feel-good bounce of the island rhythms.
Cunningly blended into the music are Natalie Berman’s indie-pop-ready vocals. Album opener, “Keep You”, offers heavily reverbed vocals drifting across ska horn riffs while “It’s Too Late” conjures up a chilled out Beth Gibbons (if such a thing is possible).
While Bergman has a dynamic voice her vocals are of a kind that have become entirely too familiar in recent years, clearly channeling such chick-pop heavyweights as Florence Welch, Regina Spektor and even Santigold. This derivative vocal style may sorely limit the shelf life of the album, or put some listeners off entirely.
Looking past the strength of the first two tracks, the record quickly looses momentum with subsequent cuts offering little variation from the electro-reggae pop formula.
While the quirky instrumentation (sax, kalimba, autoharp), neat production, and blending of genres provide a solid base for the album, the all-too familiar vocal style and pop structures do not stand up to multiple listens.
Isles is an inoffensive summer soundtrack, but an album lacking depth or long-term interest.
