British electronic duo Darkstar spent their third album (2015's Foam Island) capturing the mood of Northern England before Brexit, interspersing their warped electro-pop tunes with snippets of interviews with young adults from the town of Huddersfield, who reflected on their place in the community and their relationship to their environment. On 2020's Civic Jams, Darkstar turn the focus to their home and its immediate surroundings. The album was unintentionally released several months into the COVID-19 pandemic, inadvertently giving new meanings to songs about domestic comfort and tangible space. Considering that most clubs around the world were closed when the album came out, it's fitting that the record sounds more like a distorted memory of the club experience than proper dance music. The beats are certainly steadier and more kinetic than on Darkstar's previous albums, but instead of the twitchy garage shuffle of their earliest singles, most of these tracks are grounded with a heavy, leaden thump. "Jam" nods to dance music's past with an organ bass tone taken from a sample pack assembled by old-skool rave legends Altern 8, but it takes on a ghostly, hollowed-out quality in this context. "1001" reaches for the stars with its wispy yet dramatic synth melodies, while hypnotic delay effects on the vocals contribute to the track's smoke-and-mirrors feel. "Wolf" has a bit more sentimentality to its Jai Paul-like vocals, and the beats gradually creep into a bit more of a 4/4 thump. "Tuesday" is another variation on the sluggish boom-clap beat running through most of the songs, but with faint, flittering oscillations and echoed female speech rather than Aiden Whalley's usual soft quaver. "Text" has some of the album's most upfront lyrics ("I live in your good guidance, I live in your good grace") over an eerie array of distant cash register clinks and trailed-off fluttering. Civic Jams is comforting in a way, but it generally conveys a sense of wanting to get back into the real world and feel the thrill of discovery and the excitement of shared experiences once again. ~ Paul Simpson, Rovi

1		Forest
2		Jam
3		1001
4		30
5		Wolf
6		Loon
7		Tuesday
8		Text
9		Blurred
10		Jam[Pushups In The Rave Mix]
11		Yeah

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