- Existential love songs and synth pop serenades from nu disco heroes Morgan Geist and Kelley Polar.
- The idea of Morgan Geist—half of Metro Area, among other projects—and Kelley Polar, the classically trained cellist turned nu disco provocateur also responsible for Metro Area's famous strings, teaming up is enough to make one dream of a follow-up to the beyond-legendary Metro Area album. But let's get this out of the way at the start: with one notable exception ("Thing"), Au Suisse doesn't sound anything like Metro Area. And it doesn't need to. The record is a strange and wonderful update of New Romantic British pop from the '80s with immaculate studio production and hints of contemporary dance music.
Like their respective back catalogs, the songs on Au Suisse flirt with kitsch and pastiche, though are crafted with care and vulnerability. The first thing on the record is Polar's striking falsetto with a whiff of an affected British accent: "You might be left behind / by the powers that be," he sings, as layers of '80s synths build into an orgy of electronic harmonies.The accent itself (not to mention the synth arrangements) is a good barometer for the record's blissed out synth pop itinerary—like the road trip homage "GC" or the plucked bass and wafting piano of "Plans," which ends with lovesick shrieks that call to mind Scritti Politti.
The record's two best tracks, "Thing" and "Eely," take these '80s motifs and fuse them with club chops. "Thing" is the closest we get to Metro Area with a chunky disco bassline and choral harmonics softened with Blitz Kids references. The result sounds like Todd Terje enlisted as a co-writer on Sade's Diamond Life. The start of "Eely" toys with the melodrama of Culture Club, but towards the song's end you can hear just the faintest dashes of a 303 snuck in to update the New Romantic formula.
This is what makes Au Suisse so fun to revisit: it's filled with these sorts of hidden flourishes. On the aching slow dance, "Savage," each note of Polar's vocals are mirrored by some element of the production, whether it's the gated reverb on the drums or the plucked country guitar. On "Closer," another eyeliner-and-Gauloise anthem, the two duet over a skeletal arrangement of twinkling chords, a hi-hat and the occasional kick.
There's a weightiness to Polar's songwriting that both complements and contrasts the crystalline production touches. I'd venture to say he's the dance music Marianne Moore, infusing whimsy into historical ephemera—this is the guy who sang a love song to the Greek philosopher of paradox, after all. On "Vesna," over Geist's staccato synths, he tells the story of Vesna Vulović, the sole survivor of a bombed airplane and turns it into something at turns romantic and existential: "I wish I could ask her / fading into the blue / did you know always know deep down / that it would have to be you."
Au Suisse is a welcome sit-down between two artists whose careers have been indelibly defined by one another, even if they've never really made a record together. Polar started off at Julliard but pivoted from modern classical thanks to Geist, who released Polar's strange electro and disco pop albums on Environ in the mid- to late-'00s. Polar's influence on Geist's career has been just as important. Can you really imagine "Miura" without the string loop?
Both artists have been visited by a certain amount of serendipity in their careers. It's not just Geist, who (with an assist from Marc Kitchen) scored a certified #1 UK hit, or restarted the disco revival amidst minimal mania, but also the fact that Polar quickly went from "the guy who does the strings for Metro Area" to one of nu disco's most enigmatic figures. He created homespun mythologies about starting riots at Juilliard and getting Resident Advisor's taciturn then-editor-in-chief, Todd L. Burnes, to write in hyperbole. With standards this high, Au Suisse lives up to each artist's legacy without sounding like much of anything else out there. But who knows—with these two cultural bellwethers together, we could be at the start of a new romantic revival.
Tracklist01. Control
02. Thing
03. GC
04. Pain & Regret
05. Savage
06. Vesna
07. Eely
08. Plans
09. AG