WINTER GLOVES PLAY VIRGIN FESTIVAL (TORONTO CENTRE ISLAND) SEP 7.
Half a decade ago, the punchy, patterned synth-rock made by Montreal’s Winter Gloves would’ve sounded très au courant. Their debut LP is dance music for nerds, with the edges sanded off. But though the buzzy keyboards, spare chimes and mannered, repetitive beats on About A Girl feel slightly dated, the real flaw here is a lack of interesting songwriting. Aside from the reflective “Glass Paperweight,” which loops singer Charles F.’s thin falsetto around a metronomic pulse of quiet, cottony keys and a brittle guitar line, and the snarling riffs of “Party People,” there’s little to separate the 10 tracks here from one another.