Album Review: Burn Cycle

Dunedin EDM (Electric Dance Music) duo Jaggers X Lines have been putting in the mahi (work) over a few years; headlining their own shows and playing support slots to some credible touring acts including looping wunderkind Tash Sultana.

The pairing of Eliana Gray and Morgan Smilie describe themselves as ‘alt-pop weirdos’, and it’s a fitting description.

As their debut full length album progresses, it’s easy to hear that they’ve captured these songs at the right time. Right from the Let’s Go vocal sample on Problem Drinking which sounds like it comes from an 80’s jazzercise album, the tone is set for a great debut release. Burn Cycle is beautifully produced with Morgan Smilies’s expertly crafted beats providing an addictive canvas for Gray’s vocals to weave across.

The press mentions ‘Gray healing from trauma’, but there’s no heaviness, or melancholy, or self-indulgence here, no ‘oh poor me’. Lyrically it sounds like someone who’s been through an unfavourable experience or two but is through the other side and heading toward celebration. If one takes the words or event theme of Let Me Let You In in a literal way, it could tell of someone who’s been emotionally or even physically burnt in a relationship and is hoping a new friend or partner can help her break down the walls they’ve put up to protect themselves from hurt…Or I’m way off base, and it’s a metaphor. Let Me Let You In is one of the more up-tempo numbers on the album and could even get this partially fossilised reviewer dancing.

Smilie is a great producer with a keen ear for great samples and song construction, whether it’s on slower numbers like Hold Me Tighter or Soft Little Lights he knows where to fill space and how to let songs breath with space.

In the 1980’s and into the 1990’s the electronic dance music genre in some ways took up where progressive rock left off with long remixes designed for a drugged-out dance floor, but that couldn’t be further from the truth when it comes to Jaggers X Lines first full length offering the songs are succinct.

The 9-song album closes with the absolute banger that is Losing My Breath which stomps along for just 2:49 and in this not-so-humble reviewer’s opinion could easily have been twice that length.

Burn Cycle is a strong and confident first full-length release which should set Jaggers X Lines up for a fantastic career.