Like the first half of the album, this is a collection of remixes and original material (with singer collaborations). Listen to Repeating Motion to get a taste of the pick-me-up anthems that litter the record. I adore All I Got, which is as catchy as anything you’ll hear all year.

While the first half of the record was largely pump-up, the second half slows things down a little bit to contemplate. Listened to in tandem with the first half, the record feels much more complete. Tracks like 405 work better alongside the rest of the album than they do on their own. While I love Cheap Sunglasses, I think the best new track here is We Belong, which is a beautiful manifesto for electronic music as a genre, but also for those of us who understand the nature of electronic things: nothing lasts.

While describing the record as melancholic would be a stretch, it would be fair to say it feels like the unravelling of a Friday evening. Pairing the album with its predecessor is strange, though: because the first half is so danceable and this record is so much quieter, it makes the album feel front-loaded to a fault. The records are better when listened to independently.

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Now Hear In might sound noisy, but there’s a shouted melody to it that never descends into anything obnoxious. And yet the punk energy is there all the way throughout. Psychic Trauma isn’t just a bunch of guys smashing some drums and power chords, and while Pattern Walks ends up getting heavier than some listeners might feel comfortable with, it’s immediately followed up with the more radio-friendly I’m Not Part Of Me.

It’s hard to find a track I dislike, and while I might not be throwing this on at house parties like I did with Celebration Rock for a while, this is going to get some heavy rotation in the car with the window rolled down. I think my favourite track is Quieter Today.

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I Can’t Help You and Duke are great intros to this oddball record. That’s not to say the whole record is slow or apathetic; some of the later tracks introduce rock elements unheard in the first couple tracks. Check out Wild as an example.

When Cate really slows it down for the title track, there’s a whole different vibe of sadness going on. Throughout the record, you get the feeling that Le Bon isn’t pleased with the world around her. But by the end, you feel like maybe she thinks she’s the problem.

The album is existentialist wandering, as Cate drifts from one point of anxiety to another. It’s not political, and it’s hardly societal, but Cate is writing about the same dissatisfaction many of us go through: if everything is good, why are we so sad? What is it we’re missing? As a result, it’s a record that feels both distant and intimate, like Cate is holding up a mirror and also saying that we can’t possibly understand what her life is like.

She’s not despondent, though. She shouldn’t be: Mug Museum might be her strongest record yet.

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There’s a hint of moroseness to the record that a lot of these indie pop bands don’t have these days. I love Anything to Hurt You, but the real catchy songs are things like You Can’t Just Stop Being Cruel or Dragging Me To Hell.

Most of the album is catchy though — by the time you’re done, it’s almost to the point of being overwhelming. Tracks like Just To Be Like You or Boy don’t stop coming. Maybe it’s too much of a good thing — but is there really such a thing?

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Singer Jessica Weiss’s voice reminds me of Beach House’s Victoria Legrand, but I find Fear of Men is a little more listenable thanks to her. But what she sings about seems to refute the point: existentialism, anger, nihilism, the list goes on. Fear of Men would rather take names than sit quietly, and as their band name suggests, these fragments perhaps sound scarier than the band would intend. (Or maybe they want to terrify us and shock us into submission.)

Also unlike a lot of dream pop bands, Fear of Men gets straight to the point. There’s not a lot of aimless drifting on Early Fragments. Listen to Seer or Mosaic, the album’s first singles. The band develops each song, and takes their time to do it, but they don’t hesitate to get into the vocals. Some of the tracks are a little more radio-friendly than others — I’m partial to Born and Ritual Confession, which have multiple charms — but the whole album is great. Highly recommended for fans of the genre.

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