Mackintosh Braun - Arcadia (2015)

Portland synth-pop duo Mackintosh Braun just want you to love them. Playing together since 2006, the pair are well known to television execs—they’ve placed songs on Grey’s Anatomy and Gossip Girl—but still relatively unknown in local circles. Ian Mackintosh and Ben Braun are banking on that changing with Arcadia, the duo’s shiny, transparent new record, which doesn’t sound like it was written by them as much as calculated in a lab by scientists to mimic every other keyboard-heavy band that plays the noon slot at Coachella. The music aims for the rafters but often sounds better in a cubicle. It is overwhelmingly catchy and pleasant, sure, yet also limp and timid. Mackintosh Braun is best when it slows down the pace—soft-focus burner “Another Place” is rather lovely, hitting that sweet spot between saccharine ’80s ballad and quivering chillwave revival. Arcadia could use more tunes of the same ilk, because imitation only gets you so far.