Synth-Pop Package Halfway to Something

Anything Box is the wispily tuneful synth-pop band that migrated from New Jersey to Orange County in 1989, scored a short-lived major label deal with Epic, had a minor dance-club hit with the tremulously plaintive “Living in Oblivion,” and has hung on since with a series of CDs on small labels.

“Elektrodelica,” the fourth Anything Box album, finds auteur Claude S. (for Strillo) taking half-successful half-measures to give his sound some heft and ballast. On several tracks, Anything Box musters a good, dense, chugging low-end attack akin to the Jesus & Mary Chain or Psychedelic Furs. From that propulsive base it floats candy-pop melodies that make for a nice contrasting mix (one thing about Claude S.--he’s never at a loss for a hooky tune). But elsewhere it’s off to a gauzy, undifferentiated synthesizer dreamland, or to a string-orchestrated ‘60s pop-baroque sea of lush swells in which Anything Box seems to set its course by such cottony moments as the Beatles’ “Because” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” or the Hollies’ “The Air That I Breathe.” If Claude felt tempted to make a trendy, Prodigy-like transformation from mild-mannered popster to rage merchant, he certainly has resisted it.

To go with its attractive but unambitious sound, Anything Box has a worthy but blandly expressed message. Claude doesn’t want our lives to be stymied and irrevocably clouded by the knowledge of death and decay, so he urges himself and the rest of us to fight the darkness with creativity and hopeful thoughts. When the urging is really urgent, as on “Negaverse,” or the music is exceptionally pretty, as on “Heaven60,” one can overlook the fact that Anything Box merely recycles nostrums from pop psychology and pop philosophy, such as: “Even when it seems we have nothing / We need to self-love.”

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Anything Box needs to develop its newfound, grittier sonic means and use them more consistently to forge interesting contrasts with its dominant pretty-and-wispy side. It also needs to grapple more specifically with the gritty realities of life that it here treats only in the abstract. But “Elektrodelica” is a half-step in the right direction, and Strillo’s well-tuned ear for melody always gives Anything Box a chance to come up with something worthwhile.

(Available from Jarrett Records, 6633 Highway 290, Suite 308, Austin, TX 78723; or Web site https://www.jarretrecords.com)

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* Anything Box plays tonight at Global Village, 2443 E. Chapman Ave., Fullerton. 8:30 p.m. $10. (714) 446-8860 or (714) 780-9223 (taped information).

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Ratings range from * (poor) to **** (excellent), with three stars denoting a solid recommendation.