eflating electronic music’s pretensions with irreverence isn’t a new idea, as groups like Chicks On Speed, Le Tigre, and DAT Politics have already shown, but Sex In Dallas credibly joins their ranks by infusing Around The War with a refreshing lack of preciousness and a generous helping of synth-pop hooks. Driven by the desire to create something different from Daft Punk and Air, French-born techno punks Adrienne Walter, Jean Marc, and Mohini Gesiweiller founded the group in Paris in 2003 and cite New Order, The Sex Pistols, and Juan Atkins as influences, with the decadent musical result powered by Teutonic pounding beats.

While techno is the common thread throughout all ten songs, the material is by turns raucous and gentle, even sweet. On the ferocious side, the album opens in macabre manner with the dark techno-pop of “Crazy Dogs,” whose visceral synth lines pound mercilessly amidst vicious growling samples until it ends with the brutal sound of some poor sod’s guts being ripped out. “Around The War” is, not surprisingly, stomping techno with the trio shouting “We wanna war”, reminding of John Doe and Exene Cervanka’s similarly anguished screams for X. Presumably not coming to a radio station nearest you is “Everybody Deserves To Be Fucked” which shows the group’s punkier side; conversations mumble throughout while grinding synth banks mass and escalate, deepened even further by guitar-like fuzz. A bit less aggressive is “Berlin Rocks,” a nice combination of melancholy melodies, thwacking beats, and grinding bass lines that perpetually threatens to explode (though never does) into anthemic techno.

The gentler songs typically feature Mohini Gesiweiller’s vocals which aren’t incredible but still serviceable enough; ultimately, it’s the compositions themselves that impress most of all—especially in songs like “Song Of The Beach” and “Lost In La Playa”. The album peak, however, is the techno-ballad “5 O Clock”, six minutes of Europop bliss whose most irresistible element is an incredible plummeting synth hook.

Unfortunately, the album runs out of steam in its last quarter, as “Georgio” and “Golden Chains” sound like comparative leftovers and evidence a notable drop-off in quality, and the closer “Clerk Work” which, while better, exploits the mundane life of the white-collar worker as a too-easy target (something also done in Håkan Lidbo’s “Clockwise”). But the lapses don’t negate Around The War’s strengths, of which there are more than enough to go around. Any group that can release a debut with songs as good as “Crazy Dogs” and “5 O Clock” certainly merits further listening.