They claim they’re from the UK, but I don’t believe it. The way the guitar seems slightly de-tuned and the preciseness of the drums, the slur of the singer’s voice. They’ve got to be from the Midwest. Indiana, maybe.

People in the Sun really is the sound of working in a power plant. The kind of power plant that is run by Devo. You run around in plastic, bright-colored suits, and your coworkers seem more mechanical than they machinery. It has that happy bounce of factory full of workers completely unaware of existential dread. The Wes Anderson work place, full of bright colors and quick quips, for the blissfully unaware.

It’s industrial for the non industrialist. It’s the smile stuck frozen on your face to stave off the reality that things might suck.

As you dive deeper into the album, other tracks can become more of a synth-driven circus act, such as “Classic Evil”. It’s the balancing act of teetering between eerie and sludge. Like you just took some poppers and walked into the big top. Remember that scene in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas where they go to Circus Circus? “Classic Evil” is what that would sound like if, rather than published in 1971, it written in the 90’s amongst the computer programmers that stayed up too late writing code.

This album has a little of everything that I enjoy right now, hitting all the spots that I need aim for; it’s self-described as coldwave, post-punk, and lo-fi on Bandcamp, which is everything one could really ask for in 2019. It comes across as methodical at times, chaotic at others. It touches upon that Indiana Liquids/Coneheads feel, while not ripping it off. But right when you think you can put it in the Mark Winter category, it turns around and gives you a bleak, ethereal world-sound reminiscent of Boy Harsher (which I still need to fully dive into, so put this comparison under a microscope).

If there is an early indicator of what 2019 should sound like, I wouldn’t hesitate to point towards Powerplant. I don’t know if I should go to a dark club and stiff-arm-dance to this or coal mine while wearing my energy dome to the likes of them, and I think that’s a good thing.