Album Review: Mackintosh Braun

Arcadia (Chop Shop/Island)

By MICHAEL MANNHEIMER

[PASSION PIT PANDORA] Portland synth-pop duo Mackintosh Braun just want you to love them. Playing together since 2006, the pair are well known to television execs—they've placed songs on Grey's Anatomy and Gossip Girl—but still relatively unknown in local circles. Ian Mackintosh and Ben Braun are banking on that changing with Arcadia, the duo's shiny, transparent new record, which doesn't sound like it was written by them as much as calculated in a lab by scientists to mimic every other keyboard-heavy band that plays the noon slot at Coachella. The music aims for the rafters but often sounds better in a cubicle. It is overwhelmingly catchy and pleasant, sure, yet also limp and timid. Mackintosh Braun is best when it slows down the pace—soft-focus burner "Another Place" is rather lovely, hitting that sweet spot between saccharine '80s ballad and quivering chillwave revival. Arcadia could use more tunes of the same ilk, because imitation only gets you so far.

SEE IT: Mackintosh Braun plays Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., with MXMS, on Thursday, May 14. 9 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.

WWeek 2015

Willamette Week’s reporting has concrete impacts that change laws, force action from civic leaders, and drive compromised politicians from public office. Support WW's journalism today.