wo people, alone together: L.A. electronic/other-pop pair Hecuba’s new album is, like their previous way-acclaimed Paradise album on the Manimal Vinyl label, a strange and unsettling thing. They create a brutally/beautifully minimalist electro- / arty sound and place with enormous emotional impact, an impact that comes by way of the most artfully distanced and obliquely moving “pop” music, so very postmodern and intellectualized. The Modern album explores the couple’s relationship as lovers/collaborators/friends; there’s an almost unbearable tension in these tracks as they fret/fuss/anguish and celebrate their blurring of identities, losing their selves in the process. The album is a contemporary take on those classic Lee Hazelwood/Nancy Sinatra tracks where each tells his/her side of the story, and it’s cruel, it’s vicious, it’s forlorn and it’s ever so slightly funny. And it’s embarrassing to witness, a testament to the depth and execution of its concept. Hecuba do all this with high intelligence, not to mention advanced musical artistry. As they expose themselves to us in musical and lyrical tones of shocked numbness and suppressed anger, all these wormy synth squiggles/bleeps traverse far more complex emotional minefields. Brutally spare beats and synth textures turn to mocking sour whines in short-shock tracks like “Dancing” (“I don’t care about dancing anymore / I don’t care about you anymore”), “Faith” (“Give me all your faith / Give me all your devotion / body / abandon…You’ll never be lonely”) and “Modern” (“I got beat up but I’m laughing now”). The doo-woppy “Turn Out the Lights I” shows off the well-produced cleanness of the duo’s suggestively voluminous sound and unconventional synth textures, which often play like particularly irksome flys in the ointment. That sheer musicality is most interesting on “Turn Out the Lights II”, where dissonant hornish samples interweave a piano perhaps like the couple’s matrixlike relationship as each acknowledges the need for the other (“Where do you go when I turn out the light / that’s what I want to know / In the dark I can’t see the light”). Especially resonant synth textures and old-school beat box rhythms adorn the closing “Crime, Violence” (“It comes in waves…” “It’s over between us”), suggesting of course not just an objection to being pushed around, but the overall immensity of the situation.