Capsules - Northern Lights and Southern Skies

by Maarten Schiethart

published: 13 / 8 / 2013

Capsules - Northern Lights and Southern Skies

Label: Vespra
Format: CD

Mediocre 1990’s-influenced synth popon third album from Kansas-formed electronic trio, the Capsules

Review

Taking off on the wrong foot as a kind of girly krautronica, the dreamy synth pop of the Capsules sound very much like a blast from the past, in particular from the nineteen-naugthies. Singer Julie Shields urgently needs to blow her nose though, as her casual, nasal and distant sounding vocals cannot conceal the certain mediocrity in the songwriting. The 'lyrics' are included on the inner CD sleeve, and most words consist of just three or four letters. The limited tedium goes on for almost three quarters of an hour, by the end of which she still hasn't blown her nose. Probably the most exciting track off 'Northern Lights and Southern Skies' is 'With Signs Repeating', but when you remember the days of Ladytron, or Spray, should you want to act really obscure, the Capsules alas are simply on a repeat job. Ultimately this proves to be some dozy cow new wave experiment. Grazing the usual fields, the predictability in the song structures gets summed up from the opening track, 'Across the Sky' - only to be topped by 'With Signs Repeating'. Could this be an unwanted re-issue from 1996? I can't honestly tell.

Track Listing:-

1 Across the Sky
2 From the Start
3 Our Apocalypse
4 With Signs Repeating
5 The Heartbreaker
6 Time Will Only Tell
7 Test Drive the Other Side
8 Where It All Begins
9 All At Once
10 Magnetic Fields