The great effort here is obfuscation, from the penchant for blown-out pads and kicks to the pixel-spatter album art. (Even the text of the album’s slim press release arrives glitched out in Zalgo.) When they go for it, the results can be astoundingly original. Against back-combed synths, the villainous AI system from Portal sings a lullaby on “inside,” and asks, uncaring, “What is real?” Just as soon as a musical touchpoint takes shape—and there is a smorgasbord on offer—it will be flipped and ripped to bits. The Trinibad keys opening “gimmi it” abruptly give way to a scramble of snapped drums and vocal chops. Amid the adrenaline gush, a calm, detached voice can be heard, waking from an acid dream: “This is really nice.” “dreamcast” nods further in the direction of the unreal, in both its title and the fizzy synths and nondescript woodblock clomps that conjure video-game loading screens—those waiting rooms for the extended universes that game developers promise. (An old Pinterest account for the pair collects images from Tekken, Tomb Raider, and Ghost in the Shell as inspiration; the Two Shell logo itself isn’t a long way from the Sony Computer Entertainment emblem of the ’90s and ’00s.)
The jokes don’t always land. “be somebody” seemingly riffs on a Kings of Leon power ballad, but it’s not clear to what end. Closing opus “Mirror” sounds like Burial six Red Bulls deep, flicking through Instagram Reels—and not necessarily in a good way. But in the album’s standout, “[rock✧solid],” Two Shell have produced a rarefied piece of unhinged dancefloor gold. It’s so good precisely because—with its jumbled vocals and physical rhythms—it’s not trying to be too clever. It is primal in its hedonism.
The highfalutin take on all this is that it is postmodernism writ large: no single identity, no objective perspective; all time, and art within it, is for the taking. Several different advance versions of this album were sent to Pitchfork editors, with varying tracklists and trollish versions of multiple songs. When a new video for lead single “Everybody Worldwide” dropped on the same day as the album was released, it was longer and stranger (and more sugary) than either the initial single version or the track available on the album itself. There’s every chance that, by the time this review is published, the whole record will have been altered entirely. Or simply disappeared.
It’s easy to overthink a fun creative endeavor. Two Shell may well have been conceived as a treatise on computers, creativity, and the AI-shaped future we seem to be hurtling toward. Above all, though, what comes through is something simpler. In fact, the duo may already have given it away amid all the trickery. Back in 2022, when they gave that since-deleted interview with The Face magazine, Pat and Jack said that they “want to make new ways for people to feel excited about the things they like.” Sometimes that means making a weird website, or a hat with a light on it. And sometimes it’s just a case of lining up the drums and bassline in such a way that the dancefloor can forget about going to work on Monday.
