Kiwi electronic duo The Naked and Famous, now comprised of just Alisa Xayalith (vocals, keyboards) and Thom Powers (vocals, guitars), are back with their fourth studio album, Recover, their first full-length release since 2016’s Simple Forms.

Recover is an apt name for the record. Having formed the band while they were dating as teenagers in their homeland, they were catapulted to success and widespread acclaim with their debut album Passive Me, Aggressive You in 2010, which racked up award wins and nominations aplenty.

That record also spawned their hit single Young Blood, which went to number one in New Zealand, featured in TV shows and adverts around the world, and has been covered by a whole host of artists, from Jessie J and Birdy to reggae band Three Houses Down. A huge 200-date world tour followed, before The Naked and Famous relocated to Los Angeles, seemingly on the precipice of global domination.

However, by the time Simple Forms was released, Peters and Xayalith had separated, with that album documenting much of the breakup process. After they’d toured the record, band members David Beadle, Aaron Short, and Jesse Wood left the group, leaving the future of The Naked And The Famous in some doubt.

Four years later and I’m pleased to report the band are still alive and kicking. Recover charts the process of growing up and moving on Xayalith and Powers have been through, but it also opens up their sound to new influences and forms, and its all the richer for it.

Sunseeker and Everybody Knows are the sort of soaring synth-laced anthems they had built their reputation on, and are as good as anything they’ve put out before. But there are darker moments here too, such as on single Death and The Sound Of Your Voice, a track Powers wrote with his friend Scott Hutchison before the Frightened Rabbit frontman tragically took his own life in 2018. Key to the band’s sounds has always been the interplay between Powers and Xayalith’s vocals, and that dynamic remains integral here.

Songs like Easy exemplify this, while the layout of the album has been intelligently put together, with a nice flow between the different vocal styles in tracks. And that’s a good way to sum up Recover. Ultimately, despite all the change The Naked andFamous have been through, this is still Xayalith and Powers doing what they’ve always done best: writing gorgeous, soulful electro-pop songs. It’s just now they’ve got even more experience, both in life and music, to propel them through that process.

 Indietronica     post-punk revival 

Recover track list:

1. Recover

2. Sunseeker

3. Bury Us

4. Easy

5. Come As You Are

6. Everybody Knows

7. Echoes In The Dark

8. Well-Rehearsed

9. Monument

10. Death

11. Count On You

12. Muscle Memory

13. The Sound Of My Voice

14. (An)aesthetic

15. Coming Back To Me

Author: Joe Sharratt

Joe Sharratt is a writer and journalist based in the UK covering music, literature, sport, and travel.