Blue Sky Black Death are a production duo out of the Pacific Northwest. They’ve worked with and remixed Hip Hop mainstays such as Jean Grae, Crooked I, and members of Freestyle Fellowship and Jedi Mind Tricks. But this album, Third Party has little to do with Hip Hop. At all. It’s a Synth-Pop album created with Alexander Chen, the singer for Indie-Pop band Boy In Static. Those willing to take a side trip down the road of well-crafted Pop music with the duo will be rewarded with an out-of-the-box album that maintains the producers’ high standards. 


Third Party opens with “Carl Sagan” whose stuttering drums and glacial synth lines create a suitably despondent atmosphere over which Chen sings a pretty melody line which is spoiled only slightly by his lyrical triteness, a flaw of nearly every song he appears on. “I’m not described in your stack of phony books” is not a traditionally mature lyric. Beyond the songwriting, there is also a problem with Chen’s vocals. His voice is thin and his delivery is ineffectual and hesitant. He sings a lot of seemingly cruel or cynical lines, but in the voice of 15 year-old who doesn’t yet understand what it means to really hurt someone emotionally. This vocal delivery is one of the main problems with the MOR Indie Rock that has become so popular in the last decade. Blue Sky Black Death has created these amazing sonic landscapes and Chen just mumbles over them either apprehensively or vacantly. One wonders how much better this album would have been with a vocalist who took his cues from the damaged baritone of an Ian Curtis or the deranged composure of “The Idiot”-era Iggy Pop rather than the Postal Service. But Chen can be credited with a the ability to pen and deliver a simple, hummable melody as “Absentee” proves.

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Elsewhere the Seattle/San Francisco production duo perfectly captures the mood of ’80s Synth-Pop. “Set Free” contrasts its deep, slightly distorted bass line with a twinkling melody line. “Institution” is a beautiful, near Balearic tune whose unhurried tempo and crying synth lines give it a sense of both euphoria and loss, particularly its closing strings and piano coda. “Slow Years” is another song which creates an atmosphere of exquisite melancholy, something the best Post-Punk and Synth-Pop bands always did. It begins with a sparkling, delicate melody line over throbbing bass and synthetic drums, slowly adding elements like wordless vocals before blossoming into a guitar driven finale. The album reaches its height with closing song, “Scandal.” Chen delivers a solid chorus, lyrics aside, and Blue Sky Black Death create their most commercially appealing backing track, all pulsating back beat and synth arpeggios. It would not be a reach to imagine this song scoring the finale scene of CW high school drama where the main character discovers the awful things their friends have been doing all season.

Although it veers away from the duo’s track record, Third Party is a benchmark achievement. Blue Sky Black Death are true students of this particular sound and in their attempt to recreate it they have succeeded brilliantly. Chen, for his part, delivers melodies that augment the production without getting in the way. His lyrical and vocal shortcomings do hold “Third Party” back in places but not enough to stop it from being a worthwhile listen. Without question fans of Synth-Pop will appreciate this record, here’s hoping that fans who only know Blue Sky Black Death’s Rap work give it a chance, too.