By Jim Reynolds
The Hipnauts Hipnautized
Hipnautized, like the best trendy dance pop, is adept at shuffling between the now and the best bits of the 80’s. Beginning with the buzzy synth bass and hand claps of the most popular single, “Gigahead”, the Hipnauts come at you with the new wave party rock of “The DJ Hates Your Dancing” and “Cookie Party”, bubbly synth pop like “Blue Skies”, the Bowie-flavored In “Obvious Places”, the shout-out-loud title track and even “The Lovin’”, an acoustic hair-metal ballad worthy of a late-night direct-order compilation. Some of the slower tracks, like “Stoplight” and “Unwanted Solicitation”, are decent but suffer a bit from excessively new-age synth backgrounds and overall blandness. However, “Where Is?” is a terrifically buzzy torch song and the fist-pumper “Crapten 25” wants to be very loud at your next party.
