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http://www.rollingstone.com/assets/images/album_review/3758f9eb5c331369267828bf7a0b13c2c8e58b6a.jpg Mondo

Electric Guest

Mondo

Downtown
Rolling Stone: star rating
Community: star rating
5 3 0
May 7, 2012

When your claim to pop immortality is co-writing "Dick In A Box," what do you do for a second act? For Asa Taccone, you turn a proven talent for smirking R&B into something deeper. The debut of his project with drummer Matthew Compton and inescapable producer/sessionman Danger Mouse is a Beck-ian journey into L.A. slacker soul, full of hooky neon jams that ponder fame's fraught highway and the emptiness of modern life. Often – as on "Waves," a dysfunctional love tune pitched with helium-sucking falsetto over a crack-pipe Motown groove – it’s unclear if the sentiments are intended as poignant or as punch lines. But on a set wired with this much sonic wit, the sincerity question may be moot.

Listen to Electric Guest's Mondo:

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