New EeL: “Wonderful Day”

Last week I called Nuxx’s Sound Ache “techrock’s infomercial,” the album capturing everything about the electronic-heavy genre. I stand by this statement, but I didn’t know about the Beautiful Girls Electro CD when I wrote that up which probably serves as a way better entryway. Mostly because it’s a compilation album featuring more than a single artist. Nuxx do make an appearance (with “Journey To The West” natch) as do √thumm. Also appearing on the compilation are Tokyo Pinsalocks and THE DIM, the latter not really striking me as “techrock” but I guess it’s a flexible sound at the moment. It’s a strong-looking album which hits on something with its title I completely forgot to mention in that Nuxx write-up…techrock seems dominated by female singers. I’ll tackle the significance of this later on.

The track off Girls Electro grabbing my attention today comes from EeL. Her song on the comp, “Wonderful day,” sounds way more manic than the stuff √thumm or Nuxx make, like an entire season of Animaniacs crammed into a song. She also eschews Auto-tune or any other vocal manipulation tricks, instead letting her natural voice skip along with the Fun Dip-stream of the music. She has more in common with the skittery cute electronics of Strawberry Machine than with most of the other artists featured here (counterpoint: Strawberry Machine is actually techrock too?), though it’s also nice to realize that whatever “techrock” is, it can branch out in all sorts of directions. Listen here.