Dan Boeckner made his name as co-frontman of the frenetic, uncertain Wolf Parade, who broke out of Canada in the prior decade’s ‘Canadian Invasion’, but has since been in a number of other acts, from his own Handsome Furs to his team-up with Spoon’s Britt Daniel, Divine Fits. Operators is his current main man operation, where he really leaned on the synths in 2016 debut Blue Wave (QRO review) and now Radiant Dawn.
Radiant has Boeckner’s anxious dance, which nicely undercuts the bombast that synth-dance too often fall into, on piece like “I Feel Emotion” and closer “Low Life”. Radiant has big moments, even veering into the eighties on such songs as “Faithless” and “In Moderan”. There are also a number of sub-minute interstitial tracks, which break up the record, but also keep it from being too one key note.
Following pretty closely on Blue Wave, Radiant Dawn isn’t going to surprise Boeckner fan, but they will enjoy it.
