Adult

Detroit’s Adult — Nicoloa Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller — has been plying its driving synth rock for six years. The duo’s determination has been rewarded: The zeitgeist finally has come around to welcoming Adult’s chilly evocations of postindustrial electro, for which its hometown provides the ideal backdrop. Kuperus’ detached monotone is an understandable reaction to the Motor City’s bombed-out landscapes and economic depression, yet she retains a stoic glamour amid the grimness. Miller’s sleek, new-wave and techno hybrid encourages putting pedal to metal and maybe even shaking a butt cheek or two, and his raw, chugging bass lines can be as filthy as Geezer Butler’s.

But to those aware of late-’70s new wave, early-’80s synth pop and Detroit’s first techno twitchings, Anxiety Always might have an overly familiar ping. The duo’s reliance on stiff rhythms, quaint drum-machine beats, neurotically uptight (if tuneful) arrangements and rote alienation seems too much in thrall to Tubeway Army and Fad Gadget. We need a different kind of tension, as the Buzzcocks presciently noted 24 years ago. One wonders whether Adult has earned its neuroses — or is just wearing them as fashion accessories.