West London's Mari Dangerfield examines our dependence on technology and how it mediates even our most intimate human interactions on her debut, Love and Other Machines. Thematically and aesthetically, the album comes across as well balanced, being primarily synth and electronics driven, it manages to make its most poignant statements while implementing a tried and true form of pop musicality. "Virtually" in particular, makes its way, pivoting between sonic outbursts of compressed soundboard cycles, genuflecting in shallow baroque pop passages to maintain a steady momentum before sliding through an accompanying babble of bassy grooves. Even more exemplary of this interplay is "Hardwired," in which retro electronics plunk out a guileless refrain that keeps Mari's classically inclined melodies floating on a kinetic, nipping gush. While many of her touchstone tones and precious proclivities are traceable to the late '60s and '70s, there are junctures where she turns to bask in the still-bright glory of more recent pop sensations, in particular Lilly Allen. There is a wry interplay between infatuation and disappointment on tracks like "The Stars Were Wrong" and the title track, which resembles Lily's own bruised and soulful vocal inflections, but imbued with a subtle charge of rare energy and electropositive epiphany that is now decidedly Mari's signature. As our relationships with others become more and more dependent on the functions and features of apps, interfaces, and OSs, Mari's Love and Other Machines seeks to remind us of what is most important about these connective devices, not the speed and fidelity with which they permit us to share, but the heart and soul that they enable us to bare.
