Anywhere

At what point does a trend or genre become a genuine folk form? Certainly we seem way past that with “synthwave” or whatever else you want to call new iterations of early-mid 80s synth-pop. We’re generations away from the initial inspiration – indeed in 2025, further temporally from the codification of 80s revival during electroclash’s turn-of-the-millennium moment than electroclash was from its original source material. The rules of vocal intonation, mood, subject matter, tonality and the rest are very clearly laid down, but still people find value in the form for self-expression. And nobody more so than the US duo Causeway, who on their second album hit every reference point – Yazoo, early Human League, early Eurythmics, Chris & Cosey, Propaganda, affectless singing about devastating emotions, fizzing chords, clean sounds, all the rest – and yet manage to make it sound fresh, sonically immense, even current. There’s even a dose of good old 80s global existential dread, just to really make the record feel like an old friend on first listen.