Lupin Lupin CD

Lupin is the sound of an arrival. Across eight tracks of subverted, expansive pop, Jake Luppen's solo debut is all sharp edges, a fractured self-portrait pieced together through left-of-center, pop maximalism.

Inspired as much by Charli XCX's Pop 2 as it is Tears for Fears, '80s new wave, and Prince, the genre-bending record holds true to a desire to make '80s music filtered through modern technology. Featuring synth and programming contributions from Jim-E Stack and Buddy Ross, Lupin weaves together fragmented drum loops, swooning falsetto, tangles of synths, and sharp guitar-lines, the final product is an off-kilter pop-sheen, one Luppen said was guided more by intuition and feeling than anything else.