The Rapture, the hotter-than-hype retro group from New York just released Echoes, their second full-length album. It comes on the heels of the underground summer success of their single “House of Jealous Lovers.”

For the album’s sake and to bolster sales, Echoes includes “House of Jealous Lovers,” which is by far the best track the album and The Rapture have to offer. It features a hard, snappish and jangled guitar riff, plenty of feedback, cowbell and handclaps. Yet the true secret to the song is its beat. You will find yourself unable to sit still; jumping, gliding, fidgeting or doing all three somehow simultaneously. The song simply begs the listener to move and not care if they aren’t drunk or if it’s not the weekend.

The key to The Rapture’s sudden transformation from retrophilic dilettantes on their first album to dance-punk proprietors is due to the production of The DFA. To say that all The Rapture needs to make a substantive album is good production would be an overstatement, but Echoes owes quite a bit to The DFA. The percussion is hushed and minimal, enabling the abrupt disjointed guitar and keyboard to circulate to the front, thus adding more of a percussive dimension while accentuating the The Rapture’s catchy strengths.

Catchy as Echoes may be, it is difficult to discern which direction or ultimate goal the band is heading toward. It cannot be said that The Rapture will ever pigeonhole themselves into a fixed aesthetic and sound like Interpol or The Strokes. Instead, the heavy influences that show on Echoes do more good than bad.

The album demonstrates that The Rapture cannot truly find a prime influence but instead seem bent on endorsing their record collection. Unlike The Strokes & co., The Rapture’s collection is apparently the most diverse. For instance, a minute into the first track the listener may be prone to stop the disc and make sure they haven’t put The Cure’s Japanese Whispers in by mistake. Still, Echoes ambulates like someone walking down the aisle of a record store: The Beatles, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran and Gang of Four are all here, and the track “Love Is All” has far too many influences to be discerned.

Foremost, the significance of The Rapture is mostly what they aren’t and not what they are. The difference between The Rapture and the host of other start-up retro bands is that The Rapture has a multitude of directions they can seemingly travel. It seems as thought the most feasible and important direction they can go is to continue making fun, danceable, cynicism-free rock music; in turn spawning the slacker-turned-hipster to shed his or her cynical clothes and fashionable boredom.