My first experience with Miike Snow was a Peter Bjorn and John remix of their song “Animal”. For some reason, I originally thought it was the opposite – a Peter Bjorn and John song remixed by Miike Snow. Alas, searches for Peter Bjorn and John – Animal did me no good whatsoever. Upon realizing my error, I promptly located the original song, and thinking that it couldn’t be better than the PBJ (nice!) remix, opened up my ears and listened. What I heard was not what I was expecting at all; it had a dub house techno feel to it that I really liked, completely different from and a lot slower than the remix. Impressed by what I heard, I decided to continue onwards.

The self-titled debut consists of 11 solid electro pop songs that seem to like to hide in and play with the shadows, rather than coming out into the light. Swirling synths, thumping backbeats, rounded bass tones, and glittering keys masterminded by Bloodshy & Avant (Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg) help create beautiful, dark, low-key atmospheres for singer Andrew Wyatt to do his best ‘young Peter Gabriel’ over. One way to describe the sound Miike Snow has crafted would be what you’d hear if Radiohead (circa In Rainbows) and Passion Pit teamed up to co-host a rave. I suppose it would be fair to call this music techno to an extent, but it drops many of the archetypes of techno music in favor of more structure, fleshed out instrumentation, progressive pace, and vocal hooks.

While the music is handled masterfully and meticulously to the point that every peak is planned and perfected, Wyatt alternates between singing catchy choruses and well-written vocals, and using his voice as more of an instrument to better meld with the atmosphere. There’s a good spectrum of sound and style on the album, ranging from almost industrial techno to soaring, lush dreamscape, with mostly every song having its own unique vibe and reason to listen to it. The whimsical intro of “Burial” dissolves into a soulful key-heavy march; “Sylvia” plaintively laments itself through an intertwining maze of synths and vocals; “Song For No One”s indie Cali-vibe will have the hipsters scrambling to tell everyone they heard it first, while “Black and Blue” will practically groove you to death. On “Plastic Jungle”, Miike Snow serves Fall Out Boy a lesson in how “I Don’t Care” could’ve turned out. “In Search Of” is an experiment in intensity, Bloodshy & Avant knowing just when to pull the rug out from under your feet. The Elliott Smith-esque closer, “Faker”, is light on its feet, and has the perfect feel to resolve the album.

Every so often I find an album that really blows me away, one that I just can not put down. Recently, there has been Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, Florence and the Machine’s Lungs, Passion Pit’s Manners, and now Miike Snow. This album resides in a niche corner of electronica where the order du jour is not just repeating melodies over a simple techno beat, but where every moment of each song has a sound so synthesized yet so organic and natural, so labored over and intricate, that even the empty space has a reason to hang around. This is the type of cd where you could just sit down with the instrumentals and have a great time. Even so, the vocals are well thought out and never feel out of place amongst the music, allowing you to enjoy each song on two different levels. It’s great background music, and even better in the foreground.