There's no mistaking Lindstrøm's Where You Go I
Go Too for
an album sheepish about its ambition or taste. The ambition comes across in its
structure: three long tracks, one nearly 30 minutes long, supposedly inspired
by the expansive triumph of LCD Soundsystem's 45:33. The question of taste is
a trickier one that might actually call for a little sheepishness, or so it
could seem amid belatedly spacey synth battles and runs of rhythm ready to
retrofit to Miami Vice. Such is the taste of Lindstrøm, one of the prime figures of
a refreshingly unabashed Norwegian space-disco scene. Certain of his preferred
synth settings and his general air of pomp will turn away those without a soft
spot for retro-futurist fantasies, but Lindstrøm's keen sense of melody would
translate into any era: While banging away at the same simple chord progression
in "Grand Ideas," he adds enough accents and shifts in pitch to make a
primitive task sound heroic. The problem with Where You Go I Go Too is that it just doesn't
go far enough: For all the promise held out by the idea of Lindstrøm staring
down long tracks with thematic aims, the range on display is surprisingly
narrow. None of the narrowness is exactly bad, but the widescreen potential was so
high.