The Sixteens new album is finally out on Hungry Eye Records. It's been a long wait but it arrived in time for their 2007 Europe tour. The album begins with a brief audio skit portraying individual sounds captured from the environment as objects of study, like some sci-fi b-movie. Then its straight into 'Crystalline Saturate', a song that's been in their live set for some time now, and shows a more positive direction for The Sixteens. More new wave than no-wave, not abrasive like the experimental basis of the previous Fendi EP. The song has a polished and positively dancy beat, seeming to define the premise of the 'gold wave'. On 'Lesson In Letting Go' they still demonstrate their characteristic low-tech approach, with dissonant guitar interjections, peculiar sounds and primitive rhythms, but more upbeat, and its one of my favorites on the album. 'An Old DC-10' is more atmospheric, and very dark. A pummeling warlike drum beat and a synth drone provide the backdrop for surrealist post-apocalyptic text, mainly spouted out by the male vocals of Veuve Pauli, but laced with coils of female vocals of Kristo Bal (aka Louise Gas). Another song that's not new to those who've seen them live lately is 'Aphrodite', with the choice lyrics "Aphrodite in her nighty swimming through garbage"! This song is the highlight of the album and best sums up the progression of 16s, not quite as dark as before but still with a lacerate edge. It's also one of their shortest songs at five and a half minutes, where most of their audio canvases are stretched over 6 minutes.

Overall, the album has lost a certain essence of abrasiveness and confrontational sounds that I enjoyed most about the Sixteens, best displayed on the split 12" with The Vanishing. But, it shows clear and positive progress for the band themselves; their spirit indubitably remains. Particularly in their heavy-handed drum sounds, abstract and Dadaist lyrics, as well as their affinity for low-tech synthesized approach. 'Into the Gold Wave...' incorporates a bit more spoken bits, like on the 'Pastel Tourist' track, samples, and appropriated sounds. The Sixteens remain in the grey area, where you never know precisely where their pieces are going to fall, and that's what makes them exciting. They have emerged from the amorphous abyss, which seemed to suit them, but lets see where this golden sound wave they've harnessed drops them off next?