Winking her way through an interview with WNYC’s John Schaefer at SoundCheck.com’s Green Space showcase, MNDR, a.k.a Amanda Warner, was on point fielding questions about her debut LP Feed Me Diamonds, which dropped this past summer, narrating some horrid tieback tale about idyllic performance artist Marina Abramovic’s father supposedly getting murdered by being fed ground-up diamonds. One would never know that upon listening to the glistening synths and digi drum assault of its club banging audio counterpart, but Amanda skipped over that disconnect by having her own sparkly slipper dance party like a zoo animal of sorts, as the live, seated audience clearly was not her main element.
She owned it though, digging into another two tracks from Diamonds, howling out Knife-like lines with just a bit of sugar pop on their fangs – the “teenage love” new-wave “Blue Jean Youth” and a Henry Ford-inspired track dubbed “Faster Horses,” that would fit rightly on a Robyn record. High-laptronica art from a woman who cut her fangs on a collaboration with Mark Ronson, as leather-whip as awesome as it was. And stingingly provocative: “Come on dismantle me/Do it slowly,” she throated come title track outro, swishing around in that perfect Matrix-dress.
Icona Pop
These two Swedish electropop starlets have been tearing up CMJ week left and right with two handfuls of gigs. Though their slot at Wiliamsburg’s Brooklyn Bowl was markedly their last, the sentiment shared to the audience numerous times as they played their cute cards to incite as much of a dance party last stand as they could. Carline Hjelt, the main knob twiddler, moreso than Aino Jawo. But Jawo had a fur coat on. So bonus points for her. Otherwise, they did so much more justice to their anthemic cheerlead house pigeonhole, “I Love It,” that “90s bitch”-reppin’ vodka-tossing jam that went and got overplayed.
Instead, they nailed build-and-charge numbers like “Top Rated” fist-pumping hate-fun lines like “you make me sick and tired” to a glaringly underage crowd of pogo-ing girls. The only buzzkill was a drum machine fail mid-set, that they turned right round with a new number dropping dubsteppish-backed womps over an “everyday we celebrate” chorus. We imagine this is the kind of hells-yeah response Sweden has had since straight-up dominating the indie pop landscape.