- "Utopia," the first song of three on this debut by Footprintz (AKA Addy Weitzman and Maurice Knecht of Montreal), is synth pop with an ear clearly on Hot Chip. But while the song aims for ingratiating, it falls somewhere closer to blah. There are some good lines ("The sky is always shining in Utopia / It's always raining diamonds in Utopia"), but the keyboards plink too politely for their own good. "Golden Dreams," on the other hand, stays with you—or at least its hook does, a mournfully intoned "whoa-oh-oh" that harks back to early '80s Brit-mope with its stuffy head held high. It goes on too long, but that's the nature of that particular beast.
When Ewan Pearson gets his hands dirty here, everything else takes a flier. He improves "Utopia" considerably—sharpening Weitzmann's vocal line by grafting it onto a lean, electro-flavored groove with spooky keyboards, conga flavoring and pumping disco bass. In Pearson's hand, the movement from the verse to chorus—"Flashback, swimming through this fantasy / Going to Utopia and never coming back"—moves from offhanded to insinuating, especially with the backing vocals assuming new prominence. Pearson's catalog wasn't exactly short on revelatory remixes, but now it has another.
Tracklist A1 Utopia
A2 Golden Dreams
B Utopia (Ewan Pearson The Tale Of Bolo Brown Re-Trip)