Digits “When You Look Inside”

19 Jun 2014 — Henry Schiller

I’ve discovered a failsafe way to parody new wave music.

You sing in a hushed voice, affecting a welling of tears at the back of the throat.

Your lyrics should reference some vague emptiness, ascribable to no one in particular; there should be a veiled threat of either self-harm or a radical makeover.

Does your synthesizer have an arpeggio button? Preprogrammed beats? A setting called something like ‘Ice Rain’ or ‘Crystal Wind’? Good, great, fantastic.

Throw in a careful dash of atmosphere (bass), and you’re in business.

“When You Look Inside” is guilty of at least all of the above, but Digits performs the impossible feat of bucking the cheap, reappropriated destiny he's set himself up for and maneuvering into the careful bosom of synth-pop beauty. The Toronto electronic pop daemon, whose real name is allegedly Alt Altman, takes everything that everyone thinks is awful about new wave pop and basically proves that these are actually the things that have the most timeless pop appeal. He turns what most see as cheap and hollow into something artistic and necessary, all the while grappling with a case of “some vague emptiness” that actually feels legitimate and life-destroying.

“When You Look Inside” is somewhere between Grimes’ “Oblivion” and the soundtrack to a late-80s rom-dram set in a Miami high school. A herculean effort; squeezing a molten wave of cynical romanticism through the slim pipelines of synthetic kitsch.

Digits is currently on tour with St. Vincent; you can listen to his new EP The Day You Fight Back here.