Motorama expand coldwave sounds on fourth album Dialogues

While Russia’s Motorama may take their cues from Soviet New Wave bands such as Kino and Megapolis, the earlier output of the post-punk quintet from Rostov-on-Don, who will play the Mom Livehouse, in North Point, on September 22, seems more like the work of the world’s most faithful Joy Division cover band. Their self-produced debut album, Alps (2010), sounds like what you’d have heard if Manchester’s Factory Records had opened up a dingy rock dive a stone’s throw from the Ukrainian border in the late 1970s.

While the influence of Ian Curtis and Co can still be heard in their wistful, melancholic rhythms, Motorama’s fourth album and follow-up to 2015’s critically acclaimed Poverty continues the expansion of the band’s coldwave sound, with indie-pop melodies now more prominent. After opening with the beautifully sombre Hard Times, Dialogues’ pace then shifts with the galloping bassline of lead single Tell Me and the strutting I See You, an indie dance-floor anthem in the making. Motorama now sound comfortable in their own identity, with frontman Vladislav Parshin’s plaintive vocals coloured with swooning washes of synth and chiming guitars.