A jet-setting star who never spied a vacant stare he didn't ogle, Felix Da Housecat dishes lots of drama in a context that doesn't exactly beg for it. Electroclash–the waning dance genre that gave '80s robot music a wry reboot–usually favors surface over sentiment, hiding emotion behind a guarded stance lifted from fashion magazines. On his name-making 2001 album Kittenz And Thee Glitz, Felix played with that posture in a way that sounded both pointed and poignant, leaning clever story-songs against club beats set to stun.
Devin Dazzle & The Neon Fever picks up Kittenz's threads and strings them into a nicely knotty but ultimately listless holding pattern. Felix's elemental sound remains unchanged, setting new-wave electro figures against a ghoulishly funky backdrop of Chicago house. The formula results in a few rousing highlights: "What She Wants" pops at its seams with yelping vocals and rubber-band bass placed by LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, "Ready 2 Wear" yearns for love and clothes over stirring synths, and "Nina" throbs like a heart yanked out and left alone in the sun. But half of the album sounds phoned-in and flat. A slew of ingénues turn in droll vocal performances that sound lifted from the electroclash playbook, making much of topics like "Mark Jacobs' jeans" and "kissing in the dark stairwell." In the lyrical equivalent of shooting whales in a barrel, "Everyone Is Someone In LA" needles would-be celebrities and the status signs that enslave them. In isolation, songs like the fizzy, fuzzy shout-along "Rocket Ride" sound off like anthems. In the midst of a static mock-up, though, they sound like so much yammering.