The new Midnight Juggernauts album, 'The Crystal Axis, leaves DOUG WALLEN feeling conflicted.

Is the new Midnight Juggernauts album a misstep or a triumph? The answer depends on one’s tolerance for group-hug lyrics, mountain-scaling synths and radio choruses submerged in prog signifiers and peripheral electronics. It’s been called a grower, which is a nice way of saying it lacks the immediate freshness of the Melbourne trio’s breakthrough disc Dystopia (2007). From where I’m sitting, it’s alternately an earworm of a guilty pleasure and a vivid carnival of odd ideas. Setting aside the half-baked attempts at a mythological scope – not to mention the classic rock keyboards prancing throughout – a big sticking point is the easy, cheesy grandeur of the lyrics. This is, after all, an album that indulges in such platitudes as “Never been a detainee of fate”, “Shine on, kid, shine on”, and “I wanna get higher/I wanna breathe fire.” And in case you didn’t realise ‘Fade To Red’ was the last track, the band helpfully announces, “This is our final goodbye.”

Of course, none of this is by accident. The band is indulging itself, exploring iffy terrain while brandishing enough hooks to keep fans rapt. And yet The Crystal Axis is notable for being recorded much more live than Dystopia. On top of that, singer/keyboardist Vincent Vendetta, multi-instrumentalist Andrew Szekeres and drummer Daniel Stricker mostly dispense with any concessions to danceability. It’s a spelunking pop album recorded in their home city – and partly at home – with engineer Chris Moore (TV On The Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs). And so Vendetta is comfortable enough in this setting to not fret over sappy lyrics, and the band pours itself into what the press kit calls “a 50-minute symphony of synth-rock invention”.

“The band is indulging itself, exploring iffy terrain while brandishing enough hooks to keep fans rapt.”

Beginning with the two-minute ‘Induco’ – a Latin term for “introduction,” naturally – Midnight Juggernauts set about creating a sci-fi cathedral atmosphere with a beard-stroking keyboard progression and transcendent dressings. It bleeds directly into the single ‘Vital Signs’, the first of many songs dispensing feel-good wisdom against a gasping cosmic backdrop. From there, ‘Lifeblood Flow’ tingles with breathy verses and an ’80s chorus, while ‘This New Technology’ appropriates an ageless prayer (“If I am to die before I wake”) before ‘The Great Beyond’ nods to an equally overexposed bit of the Old Testament (“As we pass through the valley of the shadow of death”). So far so dodgy, but thanks to the car-chase wobble and future-funk gloss of ‘Lara Versus The Savage Pack’, the absolute cheese factor suddenly becomes almost hypnotic.

Touching off the album’s second half, ‘Cannibal Freeway’ starts with a 90-second instrumental cleanser before veering right back to daggy, nagging pop. ‘Virago’ takes much less time getting to the chorus, whereas ‘Winds Of Fortune’ is lush enough to nearly overwhelm its Doors-esque lyrics. Despite a grabby widescreen opening and fog-capped prog peaks, ‘Dynasty’ revives some of Dystopia’s Bowie worship and another readymade chorus before the too-short instrumental ‘Lemuria’ teases us with some of the most interesting sounds on the album. Then it’s time for ‘Fade To Red’, prompted by a keyboard progression that brings us full circle, for better or worse. So that’s The Crystal Axis: ambitious, silly, dense, and larded with vapid refrains. Yet it reminds me at times of Yeasayer’s divisive Odd Blood, which I love, and Dappled Cities’ Zounds, which grew on me immensely. There might be hope then. And as much as Midnight Juggernauts irk me over the course of this record, I can’t help but admire their dedication to the thing.

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The Crystal Axis is out now through Siberia Records via Inertia.