ASTR: Varsity

Synthpop is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century. There’s something about how the candy-coated melodies combine with airy harmonic elements and fuzzy bass that gives almost any song a head start toward goodness. Add some sweet vocals and a head-nodding beat via some thumping drums and you’re well on your way.

The sound was fully-formed in the 80s, so for someone like me, from the tail end of Generation X, a song with two or three any of the above musical fragments can spark giddy nostalgia faster than you can say, “Save the Clock Tower.” Many of the tracks on Varsity, the 2014 debut EP by New York duo ASTR, do just that, but up the ante by skillfully layering those sounds on top of current pop, R&B, and hip-hop’s musical bedrock.

“We Fall Down,” the first track, is as bracing as a walk up 7th Avenue on a late Saturday afternoon in January. Yes, it’s freezing, but you can also feel the sun on your face and your pulse quicken while you contemplate your response to that last minute #NetflixAndChill invitation. I can’t prove that the little whistling motif that appears at the intro, repeats during each chorus, and reappears at the outro is a sample of a similar figure from “I’m On One”, by DJ Khaled featuring Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, and Drake, but the message to the listener is clear. The beat hits hard, the bass undulates: let’s get this shit poppin’.

“Operate,” the group’s breakout song, takes you to another place. Now you’re a Knight Rider or an understudy for Ryan Gosling in “Drive”—or something—but one way or another you’re on a mission, and that mission is to bounce until you dislodge your lower vertebrae…or seduce the hell out of the one who’s been peeping you from across the room. If it weren’t for the full-steam ahead trap rhythm courtesy of Adam ASTR, featuring a bottom-heavy kick drum, snap-happy snare, and hyperactive hi-hat that kicks in during the chorus, I’d venture that this track could’ve totally been a Cure song. Zoe ASTR’s lead vocals are dark, seductive, mischievous, and full of questions, and there’s not much more I can really ask of female pop singer.

Part of the beauty of a well-crafted EP is that, freed from the temptation to add filler, artists can pack twice as much punch with half as much content. ASTR certainly achieved that here. Varsity is fun, sexy, sweat-to-me-however-you’d-like music. As if to underscore the point, they even threw in a silky cover of Drake’s “Hold On We’re Going Home,” that upped its nasty factor by 10. From the syrupy love letter that is “R U With Me” (which I’d swear on my copy of The Flash Vol. 2 #1 purposefully references the theme song to 80s sitcom “Growing Pains”) to “Blue Hawaii,” with its interpolations of Black Box’s 90s club jam “Everybody Everybody,” these guys knew all the right buttons to push to excite the (still cool) older heads while piquing the interest of the younglings, too. If you enjoy moving your body to pleasing sounds in various ways, I highly recommend this EP.

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