Over the years as a freelance journalist and blogger, I’ve interviewed several dozen artists in person, over the phone and through email, and as you can imagine I’ve written about and covered several hundred bands on top of that – with a number of them acts that I’ve written about several times throughout the years in print and on the web. So as you can imagine, I was pleasantly surprised to receive an email from Keith Gladsyz (pronounced GWAH-dish) of Diet Kong, regarding the official video for “Tempted Again,” especially since he was one of among my earliest batch of interviews and his band was the first band I profiled in a major publication – the now long defunct, New York Press. 

Over the past 5 or 6 years or so, the act has gone through a number of changes in sonic direction as they’ve played garage rock, indie rock, performance art rock and dance pop with a singularly eccentric air. On Coma Motor Inn, Beautiful Blackout and Primadonna and Remixes the band’s material possessed a sense of childlike mischief, mayhem and menace – sometimes simultaneously; in fact, in my New York Press profile, I had described their sound at the time as being like a coke-fueled party that went quickly and dangerously wrong. Naturally, during that time the band has also gone through a lineup change as they went from a trio to now being a duo of Gladsyz and his wife, Jenn Penn. And as a result, their sound has changed to synth and electronic-based dance pop that has been described as a mix between LCD Soundsystem and The Cars. 

The comparison between LCD Soundsystem and The Cars may be arguable but, as you’ll hear on “Tempted Again,” their sound is a darkly seductive dance floor orientated sound comprised of layers of undulating and cascading synths, hand clap-led percussion and gently swirling electronics paired with Gladsyz and Penn’s singing lyrics longing, lust and temptation with an ironic detachment and self-awareness that can only come from a deep seated neuroticism. And they manage to do that while crafting a sound that reminds me quite a bit of the thoughtful and deeply original deep house sounds of the 100% Silk Records roster.