Somewhere along the line, keyboardist Martin Rev and vocalist Alan Vega lost their initial one-of-a-kind chemistry and began to pull in different directions. If you ask me, it happened with Why Be Blue. I won’t deny Suicide’s self-titled debut album is easily their best, and neither would most people, but I still think they had some good in ’em to create two more albums after that—even if they followed in a different style.

Why Be Blue is not such a thing. It’s got a different style, sure. But it’s… ’90s dance pop? Yeah, Martin Rev’s playin’ shit for those dark city clubs, but there’s still something minimal about it that doesn’t make the songs as catchy as the best work in that style should be. It’s like Rev is ashamed of “going pop” and he can’t fully commit, he’s all “don’t worry guys, we’re still too cool to care.” Alan Vega can’t go without blame either. He sounds his absolute goofiest here as he holds back his usual eccentric vocal tics as to not to offend your typical club patrons, so when he does do one of his little shrieks or shouts, he falls in this strange middle ground where he sounds neither hip nor strange and dangerous—he sounds like a dork.

But can you blame these guys, really? They were one of the most adventurous and controversial acts of their time when they initially formed—I’m sure they remember those days and feel something over having to give them up. But perhaps that just shows that Suicide shouldn’t have headed into a direction they weren’t confident of. You can’t force great music, and Why Be Blue is no great album by any measure.