Rating: NN
The self-titled 2009 debut by Los Angeles’s Fool’s Gold was an improbably successful distillation of African and Western pop with vocals delivered mostly in Hebrew. It sounded both familiar and alien and was an intriguing riff on ideas about otherness and cultural appropriation. If only they hadn’t decided to discard so much of what originally made them interesting for this follow-up recording.
On Leave No Trace, the band has been pared down to five members from the much larger collective that made their debut so rhythmically and tonally rich. They’ve also focused more on ideas borrowed from 80s UK pop, which would be fine if they had better hooks. The most surprising letdown, though, is vocalist Luke Top’s decision to sing mainly in English, which only serves to highlight his shortcomings as a lyricist and emphasize an unfortunate nasal quality that didn’t seem nearly as annoying in Hebrew.
Top track: Street Clothes
