VICTORIA MARTINEZ
Arts Writer

It’s pretty tough for a Canadian to ignore a band called Hockey.

People care about hockey. Some hate it but most love it. Everyone has a team, whether they bleed orange and blue or just pretend to care. So the Oct. 6 release of Mind Control would garner a couple listens regardless of whether the music was any good.

These guys are destined to be blog darlings. Their aesthetic is infallibly cool. In fact, the online music aggregator Hype Machine already has six pages of Hockey posts and synth-pop duo Filthy Dukes have already done a remix of “Learn to Lose.”

Unfortunately, they’re just too bloody polished. While their hyper self-awareness lends to their overall cool, it detracts from any soul in their songs.

Hockey has been together for seven years and that lends to the tight sound. One gets the sense the album has been mixed to death but there’s a hint that live, the happy hooks would come to life.

The best track on the album is the one that doesn’t sound anything like the rest of Hockey. “Four Holy Photos” pops and bleeps along gently under relaxed talk-singing and folk harmonica. Hidden away deep in the album, it’s likely to be missed at a quick sampling — maybe rightly so. If this were the first Hockey song someone heard, they would end up thinking the band actually did this type of thing.

The rest of the music is bouncy and synth driven.

The lead single, “Too Fake” is super catchy. It’s like a slightly-less-awesome take on Mika’s “Grace Kelly”. Hella hooky, it’s got the theme, the soaring vocals and the spoken sections. It falls short, without falsetto or feeling. But good for a few spins, definitely.

“Song Away” sounds like it’s sung by real people, which is nice. The first time I heard the track, I mis-heard the chorus as “Tomorrow’s just a sun away,” which I thought was a cute image — nice and hopeful. The real words are cool too.

Hockey describes itself best. “This is on the rise music / this is novelty music / This is who can blame music / I don’t get fooled by it.” They aren’t pretending to be anything but fun and expressive. Some of the songs fall flat but even the dull songs are danceable.

Hockey’s album is a strong outing but like anything that banks on novelty, Mind Chaos is best taken in small doses.