Remixes

Album Review

Headlights followed the release of the quite good Some Racing, Some Stopping in early 2008 with Remixes, a collection that paired remixers with songs from the band's catalog. The roster is filled with little known names like Uzi & Ari, Jason Caddell, Son Lux, and TJ Lipple but also a few better-known acts like Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, the Album Leaf, and Cale Parks. Whether known or not, all the remixers prove very sympathetic to both the songs and the band. Instead of tearing the songs down and making them dancefloor fodder or experimental résumé fillers, they keep the vocals of Erin Fein and Tristan Wraight as the focus of each track and liberally use elements of the group's original performances. This approach could have led to an album of not very interesting revamps that added little of value to the songs, but the mixers add enough sonic trickery and give the songs enough tweaks to make Remixes a fun and quite enjoyable addition to the band's discography. Some of the mixes even surpass the originals (Uzi & Ari's simple but effective take on "Towers," the Buddy System's Spector-inspired "Owl Eyes," and Ruby Isle's discotastic "Put Us Back Together Right," to name three). The one remix that could have posed problems even before it began was TJ Lipple's mix of "Cherry Tulips" because the original is pretty much perfect. The wall of echo he lightly adds gives the song a whole new layer of beautiful melancholy that the original doesn't have. Thanks to nimble remixes like that, fans of Headlights will love this album, as will fans of first-rate indie pop with electronics.