“Sweet Disposition” stands as one of the pinnacles of 2000s indie, a track that has amassed nearly a billion streams on Spotify alone. Its dreamy sound, coupled with the pliant and luminous voice of frontman Dougy Mandagi, forged a classic that The Temper Trap have not managed to reproduce, no matter how hard they’ve tried, or how much “Love Lost,” especially in its remix with Mac Miller, continues to rack up millions of plays.
What, then, do The Temper Trap have to offer fifteen years after that moment and a decade after their last album (which would have arrived sooner had it not been for the pandemic, as they have acknowledged)? Suddenly, a new album, ‘Sungazer’, which should reintroduce them both to those who forgot about them and to a new audience hungry for songs designed to endure beyond trends.
conceived just a couple of years ago, ‘Sungazer’ keeps appealing to the big emotions without neglecting tasteful composition. Catharsis marks every track, whether in the brisk “Giving Up Air,” with echoes of Underworld’s “Born Slippy,” or in the epic, ballad-like tunes “Into the Wild” and “These Arms,” which make Dougy’s voice shine, a powerful instrument also on “Halfway,” where the “oh oh oh” choirs do not sound contrived or desperate, but fully subordinate to the emotion.
The band manages to make several of their new songs sound like genuine classics from their catalog, most notably the superb title track, also highly representative of an album filled with messages of emotional support. At times these verge on cliché or self-help, something evident in the also vibrant and victorious “Bird on a Wire,” which speaks directly to someone who can no longer go on, who feels the water at their neck, like the person on the cover.
While the guitar distortion of “Lucky Dimes,” tasked with opening the record, stands out, the second half of ‘Sungazer’ convinces somewhat less because it offers less inspired variations of the ideas introduced earlier. “Runaways” sounds too similar to “Giving Up Air,” while “Dystopia Radio” repeats some of the ideas from “Lucky Dimes” and “Halfway” borrows from “These Arms,” though in every case we are looking at good songs.
Although “Kuru” serves as an apotheotic finale for the album, stretching out for five minutes of pure emotional ecstasy, it functions more as a stylistic exercise than as a song one would frequently revisit, something that ‘Sungazer’ achieves in its own right thanks to its elegant melody. Only “Lifeline” feels somewhat out of place, recalling at times Maroon 5, although its use of vocoders earns it points. Still, its message neatly sums up an album devoted to love as a form of salvation.
