Kelley Polar is seriously out-of-sync with the current crop of fun-loving, frequency-tweaking, dance-floor troubadours such as Calvin Harris and Justice. Polar's a classically trained musician who finds his voice (more than his groove, sometimes) in the shimmering pulse of 4/4 rhythms. And on I Need You to Hold On While the Sky Is Falling, boy, does he, making his voice the lead instrument much of the time. The short and sweet (and vox-less) opener “A Feeling of the All-Thing” sounds like Prince trying not to get laid: The song's so upbeat and positive it's not a come-on, but rather “Up With People” for house-heads.
When Polar does sing, he's a songsmith with a Juno 106 more than a DJ with an 808. “Entropy Reigns (in the Celestial City)” is synth pop, sure, with Polar harmonizing, “I find love where I can” like an even-more-art-faggy Kenna. But Polar is nothing if not ambitious, taking sounds that in lesser hands might make for endless variations on a thump and trying to find a deeper voice in the ether. On “Crysanthemum,” he winds a four-part harmony around a simple dance pulse like he's remixing lite psych-popsters the Association, while “A Dream in Three Parts (on Themes by Enesco)” is pretty interesting whether or not you know who Enesco or his themes are, even if Polar does sound like Howard Jones.
And that's where I Need You can feel needless; Polar sometimes gets so adrift on a memory bliss, his coos and sighs float in one ear and out the other, back up to synth-pop heaven with the rest of the world's Information Societies.
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