Electropop – Page 6

The Arctic Wife – Constancia

“Just works.”

Tim: Remember when we first encountered The Sound of Arrows, we had trouble pinning them down to a particular genre? Well, see if you can do any better with this. According to the PR e-mail, they’re “drawing music and cultural inspiration from their Swedish and British roots” and the song “infuses a melancholic and extroverted sound with references to bands ranging from Arcade Fire to Roxette,” so see what you think.

Tom: I was all ready to start complaining about PR rubbish and how that was just a series of vague sentences… and then I heard the intro.

Tim: At which, presumably, you just sat back and enjoyed it.

He’s a Brit called Charlie who does the producing; she’s a Dane called Maja who does the singing, and I think they’re both very good at their jobs.

Tom: Agreed. There’s something special about this track: the way the piano’s never hidden despite the massive amount of instruments, percussion and production; the sheer energy that goes into it all.

Tim: I say I’m not sure how to describe it, and I’m not, largely because it’s got bits of everything from, well, from Roxette to Arcade Fire in it. But I don’t mind – a bit of a mish-mash it may be, but it’s a good one with a good sense of cohesion to it that just works.

Tom: The lyrics are odd, to say the least – there’s something about swallowing basketballs in there, I think, but as long as I don’t pay too much attention to them the track seems pretty much amazing.

Tim: Also from the lyrics: “Is this the meltdown of our golden days?” we’re asked, and I’m compelled to answer that I really hope not, because this is great.

Moa Lignell – You Had It All

“It’s certainly catchy enough.”

Tim: Last time we featured Moa, it was so generic and dull I felt compelled to write a template that we could use for future tracks, about how it was hard to pay attention to and just a bit tedious all round. Let’s see if that can be applied here.

Tim: No. It can’t.

Tom: You’re not wrong there, but – well, I swear I’ve heard that chorus before. I can’t think where. Is it just that it sounds like plenty of other tracks? It’s certainly catchy enough, though.

Tim: Not sure I recognise it, and musically that variety’s a good thing, although it does mean more effort on our part trying to think of something to write when all I can really think about is the line about halfway through that sounds like “this hymen’s all you win,” which would be a pretty horrible metaphor for something not often touched upon in pop music.

Tom: Blimey, Tim.

Tim: I KNOW. I’M SORRY. Erm, so what’s right about this. Music is lovely and sparkly; the voice is soulful and all that stuff which is meant to be good, and, erm, dammit all I can think of is that lyric. I’M REALLY SORRY. Here, have a proper video for it here to make up for that.

Puls – Ild I Mit Liv

“Danish rapping inherently sounds a little bit funny to the British ear”

Tim: You’ll be pleased to know that, unlike their previous effort, this video does not contain any images of violence or torture. Although it does feature a girl in a wedding dress, so Tom, you may want to brace yourself.

Tom: As long as she’s not trying to chase me down, I think I can stand it.

Tim: Still not sure what it is with these guys – normally, as we all know, I hate rapping verses, even if they are backed up by a decent chorus and that lot. But for some reason, I’ve never had that problem with this act.

Tom: Once I’ve got over the fact that Danish rapping inherently sounds a little bit funny to the British ear – or at least to my British ear – this works remarkably well.

Tim: Maybe it’s that they’re an actual duo rather than a soloist featuring another one, or it might just be that they can consistently put out good tracks like this.

Tom: Unfortunately, about half way through the song I started hearing “Ild I Mit Liv” as “Ally McBeal”, and the whole thing sort of fell apart for me from there.

Tim: Oh, God.

Tom: Good track, sadly derailed by my own easily-distracted brain.

Tim: Hang on – I think I’ve just lost something. Oh, right. ANY RESPECT I ONCE HAD FOR YOU. But anyway, whatever the reason for my enjoyment, though, I’m happy.

Tom: So am I, but alas for different reasons.

Anton Leuba – My Heart Blows Up (Explosions)

“I think they got that beat from an early-90s Casio keyboard.”

Tim: The last time we met Anton Leuba, it came with a slightly over the top e-mail and a track that was a bit uninspiring. The PR e-mail for this track, though, blows that one out of the water, because here, “the cute love story is matched against a heavy beat and a harsh and almost hostile soundscape”.

Tom: Man, I hope someone got paid properly to write that.

Tim: Presumably – you wouldn’t write that it’s “a song about repressing your emotion and putting work first. Until your heart blows up,” unless you were getting properly remunerated would you?

Still, with that description it’s got to be worth a listen, no?

Tom: I’m not sure, but I think they got that beat from an early-90s Casio keyboard.

Tim: So it still doesn’t live up to the e-mail, but never mind, because if it had done it would have been “dressed in grimy drums and angry synthesizers” and I probably wouldn’t have liked it. This, though, I do like.

Tom: It’s not bad, but it doesn’t really get me going. The melody’s a bit monotone – although how you make a song about explosions dull I have no idea.

Tim: I wouldn’t say dull – it’s not hugely exciting, but it’s got a decent drop into the chorus, which is loud and energetic enough to dance to in a club. A nice gentle middle eight for everyone to have a quick break to, and then we’re back for a final section that’s ALL IN and PROPER.

Tom: It’s not going to light up the charts (or the YouTube hit counter, judging by its success so far) but it’s… well, it’s competent. I’ll give it that.

M83 – Steve McQueen

Wall-of-sound stuff.

Tom: We’ve talked about M83 before, and described them as going “Full Total Eclipse of the Heart”. Technically, their genre is synthpop, but it’s more than that: it’s wall-of-sound stuff.

Tom: I fully expect this track to get used in innumerable adverts and movie trailers. It’s astonishing.

Tim: Couldn’t possibly disagree there, because it is.

Tom: The thing is, it’s even got the traditional structure, sort of. 3 minutes 49 seconds, middle eight, one final return to the chorus, slow ending. But there’s just so much going on, so many layers, that it’s difficult to keep track of.

Tim: You’re right there – I’d not really noticed that, because it’s hard to keep track of a verse/chorus when it’s primarily instrumental. The vocals that are there seem to come across as purely decorative.

Tom: Is it danceable? Probably not. Is it poppy? Well, more than others, but not enough to storm the charts. Is it good? Oh, hell yes.

Tim: Hell yes.

Niki & The Dove – Love To The Test

Are those sound effects?

Tim: As mentioned in January, shortlisted for the BBC’s Sound of 2012 poll, and, as appropriate and predicted, having been paid virtually no attention since. They have, however, still been putting out tunes, such as this, the new single from their album Instinct.

Tim: If you can overlook the dodgy compression issues, this is a pretty good track.

Tom: That’s a very 80s sound – not a complaint! – although I’m not sure about her Gwen Stefani-like vocals.

Tim: The voice, yes, is as potentially off-putting as ever, but let’s be fair, there’s not a lot they can do about that. What they can do things about is the music, and there they’ve done very good things indeed.

Tom: Agreed. There’s some complex synth work there, some unexpected Big Percussion, and… are those sound effects? I’m not sure.

Tim: I think so – I mean there’s a veritable mish-mash of things going on in there, including lots of bass, some brassy stuff, a glockenspiel and what sounds like a sword fight, and I think it’s brilliant. The verses sound good to start with, but then the chorus comes along and you realise that they were actually pretty boring, and that’s a good sign in any song.

Tom: They’ve even got the repeat-to-fade at the end. I think I have a soft spot for 80s-revival tracks.

Tim: It’s a shame the BBC seems to ignore its own awards, because these guys really have the potential to break out, if only they were given radio airplay instead of being roundly ignored. Sad, really, but I guess that’s the music industry.

Parralox – Sharper Than A Knife

This lyric video is critically acclaimed

Tim: According to this duo’s PR people this lyric video is critically acclaimed, so I suppose we really ought to watch it. (Much as part of me wants to make fun of that, it is true, and the video is really quite inventive.)

Tom: It’s easy to make a lyric video – but so difficult to make a good lyric video.

Tim: These guys are from Australia, so this comes back more from my current enjoyment of electropop than europop or anything, but I don’t care because I think this is great.

Tom: It is – and look out for some more Australian tracks appearing here in the next few weeks, as I’m on holiday down under for most of November. Particularly if they’re as good as this.

Tim: The vocals are pretty good and the backing track is excellent, and really that’s all I have to say about this. Mainly because I’m too busy listening to it.

Whigfield – 4Ever

Oh, now that’s a foot-tapper.

Tim: Last year’s C’est Cool got into the top 10 in Denmark and Sweden; previous to that, there have been no top twenty hits anywhere (Saturday Night remakes aside) since 1996. Is this the second step back to greatness, or was that merely a blip on an otherwise uninteresting radar?

Tom: Oh, now that’s a foot-tapper. I mean that literally, in that my foot started tapping to it.

Tim: As did mine. I also started bouncing on my chair gently.

Tom: That’s a really pleasant song. I suspect it’s one that’ll get annoying with repeat viewings rather than better, but hell: I’d dance to it.

Tim: Absolutely – it’s certainly a jaunty number. There’s excellent use of harpsichord throughout – perhaps too much, actually, because, at almost a full half-minute, the repetitive bit in the middle is (for me) at least fifteen seconds too long.

Tom: You are so wrong about that. It’s exactly the right length. It’s a brilliant bit of arpeggiation.

Tim: I beg your pardon?

Tom: Yeah, I said arpeggiation. Get me.

Tim: Well, good or bad as that may be, I’m hard-pressed to find much else to dislike about this – it’s bouncy, it’s friendly and it’s got a lovely ‘nice day out, fun for all the family’ vibe to it.

Tom: The lyrics are pap, and the middle eight’s not much to write home about – those hissing hi-hat taps are grating – but those are minor gripes, and seems wrong to mention them when the song’s so lovely.

Tim: It does, realy, although I would add my two: first, the line two minutes in, which until I found a lyric site confirming that it’s actually “you’re the one by faaaaar. Keep…”, I was convinced was the less than family friendly “you’re the one I [erm, thing]”, which really wouldn’t have sat right.

Tom: And now I can’t hear anything else. Thanks for that.

Tim: Then there’s the fact that this doesn’t have an incredibly famous dance to it that fifteen years from now I can ruthlessly mock you for never knowing about.

Grimes – Genesis

“Very artsy.”

Tom: “This is what we in Sweden would call ‘Fulsnygg’, ‘ugly-pretty’,” writes our reader Stefan. “This song has been coming out from my speakers ever since I first heard it in August.”

He also describes the video as “very artsy”, which is quite the understatement. Advance warning: the first minute of this isn’t actually the track, so feel free to skip forward if there’s just too much artsy. Which there is.

Tim: I’m…not entirely sure what I just watched. It was…unusual? Yes, that describes it.

Tom: I started out expecting to really dislike this. But once it actually deigns to kick in, it’s really, really good. I’m not sure that modern synthpop – the trippy, ambient kind – gets much better than this.

Tim: It’s very…it’s sort of…quite— to be honest, I’ve been trying to write for about five minutes now and I still don’t know how to put into words what I think. I like it, I know that much, because it’s not really something you can dislike. I can imagine someone choosing to ignore it, or thinking “what the hell’s this?” (neither of which applies to me, by the way), but I think it would be hard to form strong opinions against this.

Tom: Even with the video?

Tim: Well, yes, there is that video, which I think (for me at least) takes away from it, because I’m listening to it again without the video, and it strikes me as a lot less out there than it did before. I still think it’s unusual, but I do like it more because I’m not now thinking “this is just plain odd”. It’s calming, it’s relaxing, it’s…no, I’ve gone again.

Tom: Grimes, incidentally, is the pseudonym of one Claire Boucher, who’s been making more experimental music for a while. This is the first time she’s made something mainstream enough to get on our radar, I reckon – and I’m rather hoping she keeps doing it.

Tim: Yeah. Yeah, I could hear more of it.

It’s not the most ringing endorsement I’ve ever heard from you, but it still counts.

Saturday Flashback: M83 – Midnight City

“It’s light on lyrics, which is fine by me.”

Tim: This is a song. I found it on my list of ‘future Saturday Flashbacks’ with no notes as to why it was there. Then I listened to it and I realised why.

Tim: Because it’s great. They’re a French band who’ve been going for a while, and this, their only hit to date, just about got to the UK Top 40 last July. It’s light on lyrics, which is fine by me because the bits that do have lyrics are frankly a bit dull, and heavy on creepy children, which is, well, something.

Tom: You’re right about the lyric parts being a bit dull, but the rest of the track really does make up for it. They went full Total Eclipse of the Heart at the end there, didn’t they?

Tim: Part of me momentarily thought that the video was going to end with a group-suicide with the whole holding hands and looking glum on top of a building, but fortunately they didn’t because that would have put a downer on the whole saxophone affair, which is otherwise slightly unexpected but rather fitting.

Tom: It’s a rare track these days that ends with a saxophone solo; it’s a rarer one that works that well.

Tim: And yet this is one. But if you don’t want it to end, and you’ve not had your fill of creepy children, feel free to view the follow-up to this, Reunion. Music’s still very listenable, but you won’t be paying attention to that.