Adult. continues to hone its mad machinery. The band is typically lumped into a list of dancefloor-ready electroclashers, but they’re really spearheading a fans-be-damned technopunk movement. Nicola Kuperus’s vocals are at their most confident, if not any easier to swallow. She borrows from John Lydon’s snotty taunts and Poly Styrene’s monotonic squawks. You can practically hear her eyes rolling and taste her acerbic sneer. Hubby Adam Lee Miller kicks his knob-boxes around, tripping up their buzzy bleepwork. He plays guitar like a game of Bop-It, and his bouncy bass lines all have at least one note wandering blindly away. I imagine the duo simultaneously trying to impress and annoy each other with their calculatedly flippant deliveries. Like the rest of their work, this album fascinates and satisfies in spite (or because?) of its disregard for meaningful lyrics, its shrill and repetitive synth sequences, and its ugly-on-the-inside production. I keep going back to it like a kid addicted to sour candy balls.

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