Hey, everyone. Nothony Pumptano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new album, Hyperdrama from Justice.

This is the newest and fourth full-length LP from the French electronic dance music duo Gaspard Augé, as well as Xavier de Rosnay, AKA Justice. It has been eight full years since the release of their last full-length LP, Woman, which was essentially a colorful continuation of the duo's efforts to embrace more retro, synth, funk, disco, and electro instrumentation. Because if you don't remember when Xavier and Gaspard broke out in the late 2000s, they made a name for themselves with one of the punchiest contributions we've had to French house and French electro house in years: the album Cross. This record was fun, it was catchy, endlessly groovy, as glitchy as it was glamorous, and it's only gotten better as the years have passed. The project has inched toward becoming 20 years of age, but funnily enough, Justice themselves had seemingly no interest in doing a cut and dry second helping for their next record. It was several years later that we got Audio, Video, Disco, where the duo focused a lot of their efforts toward recreating the genres that informed their French house style, as opposed to just giving us more of the French house style.

You could say Justice was looking back toward the past before even their greatest heroes, Daft Punk, were just a few years later on Random Access Memories, but on Audio, Video, Disco, Justice definitely lacked the finesse and command of the sounds that would prevent them from sounding just like pale imitations of music from a bygone era. All in all, while the record did have its highlights, it was still a weird departure, considering how great of a job the duo did right out of the gate in terms of carving a niche for themselves in this growing world of electronic dance music at the time. Audio, Video, Disco did receive a much cooler reception than Cross had when it was originally released, however, this did not stop Justice from essentially doubling down on Woman, and the same play pretty much rendered the same results, to be blunt about it. It was interesting to hear Justice drop a Woman Worldwide just a few years later, which involved a lot of very punchy French house cuts that saw them retooling a lot of previously released songs, specifically a lot of tracks from Woman and Audio, Video, Disco. A lot of these tracks, a lot of these remixes, resulted in better versions, and it was the project that, honestly, I think fans have been wanting Justice to indulge in for a while now.

One where the duo is most definitely playing to their strengths, which I actually think they're focusing on a lot more on this latest LP, Hyperdrama, with a lot of grooving electronic dance music tracks that, yes, do have an old-school electro-flavor for the most part. But at least for now, I think Gaspard and Xavier are done with trying to wow us with these blissful disco and prog anthems that aren't quite working and just getting back in touch with that aggressive, dark electronic dance music that they're so good at.

The single "Incognito", for example, what a gritty thrill this one is. The driving synth bass lines and eerie vocal sample shots across the track are great and contrast really nicely with the smooth bass and synth passages on the track as well. It's a bit of yin and yang until we reach the very end where we have all these intensely, progressively revving sound effects and noises bringing us to a super climactic finish. Then there's "Generator", which to my ears is another step in the right direction. It's not as glitchy or as disorienting or as maxed out as a lot of the Cross-era stuff, but I think the slick, sequenced drum machines and urgent disco-style string arrangements all over the cut are scratching all the right itches. Another first half highlight that I have to mention is the song "Dear Alan", which is loaded with all of these quirked-up grooves and basslines in the first leg. But then there is this amazing, mind-blowing arpeggiator solo sequence on the bridge that brings the groove back eventually at the very finish. It's just incredible.

With all that being said, though, there are some glossier cuts in the first leg of the record that are a bit more one-dimensional and I think feature some weak vocal contributions from a few guests. On "Afterimage", for example, we have all of this washed out, buried, basic, plain, dime-a-dozen singing from RIMON throughout. The singing doesn't even begin to hold a candle to any of the iconic vocal contributions to the first Justice record, and for the most part, they feel like a placeholder for something more interesting to be thrown in later. There was also "One Night/All Night", which was a lead single to the LP and featured singing from Tame Impala's Kevin Parker. For the most part, the track just sounds like a streamlined dance remix of a Tame Impala song, not so much a Justice track. But on top of it, after listening to the entire album itself, there's an opening track on this LP that also features Kevin from Tame Impala. And this track, vocals and all, is way better than "One Night/All Night". Why we are subjecting the audience to this redundancy now, I don't know.

The vocal features on this thing can be really hit or miss depending on the song. Again, the track that features The Flints, "Mannequin Love". Here we have more breathy, heavily manipulated and altered falsetto vocals that are just very airy, very blissed out. I feel like we already got this from Kevin, but a bit better earlier on the album. This is really too short of an album for Justice to be painting themselves into a corner this quickly. It also doesn't really help that the second half of the album is where the flow gets a bit choppier and the song's more cerebral. "Moonlight Rendez-vous", for example, is like this little saxophone synth odyssey that's swirling and dreamy. It's evocative, but it doesn't exactly stand out to me as a single piece in a vacuum, nor do I think it segues in and out of the surrounding tracks all that well either. There's also "Explorer", which is a fantastically eerie little synth piece with some great chord progressions that remind me of an old NES title or two, maybe something off of the second Zelda or Castlevania. But the beat gets really stale really fast as it just feels like Gaspard and Xavier just have no stomach for building a strong, fun, exciting rhythmic backbone to this track. There is a spoken word passage as well from Connan Mockasin on this cut, but I'd be lying if I said that it was anything that drew me back to the song.

There's the "Harpy dream" interlude, and then we go into "Saturnine" featuring Miguel, which I can give Miguel credit on this track. I think he gives a hell of a vocal performance, really one of the strongest here. My issue with this track squarely lies with the production because once again, I think we're regressing to the Audio, Video, Disco era, and the super-processed riffs and chord changes throughout the track just feel really stiff and are far, far, far, far, far below in terms of soul and groove, the Prince-type vibes that obviously the song is trying to evoke on some level, especially with how Miguel is singing on the track.

But I will say "The End" featuring Thundercat is a fantastically strong finish for the LP. The keys and synth sequences throughout this track are relentless and intense and fun and groovy in a way that I wish more of this album was like. Not to mention, Thundercat's vocal performance is really good. In a nutshell, I feel like the flow of this record is a bit choppy, and I think that Justice, while they did definitely throw us fans a few bones, there are clearly some moments here where they just don't seem all that geared toward just wanting to make straightforward, fun, thrilling, ornate, irresistible dance tracks. Because while I think the album overall is good, really Justice's best showing in years, there are some vocal features and chord progressions that come across as being just a bit too bland on the ears. And there are some cuts where it just feels like rhythmically not a whole lot of effort where detail is being put in. When the duo is going full throttle, they are absolutely killing it and doing it with a level of finesse and nuance that wasn't necessarily there during the Cross era, which I think is great. I just wish that was more of an overall focus with this album's core mission.

And I will leave it there because that is why I'm feeling a decent-to-strong 7 on this one.

Anthony Fantano. Justice. Forever.