Tag: The Lola O

The Lola O – TwentyfourSevenPartypeople

“I was hoping it’d become more shouty than it did.”

Tim: FRIDAY, so let’s drop into The Lola O’s nonstop party for a few minutes, turn the volume up loud and see if we like what we hear.

Tom: Well, that intro sounds like any 2000s pop-punk song. I was hoping it’d become more shouty than it did — but surprisingly, I enjoyed the time it took to get there.

Tim: Good, good – then in the end we have our loud and raucous vocals, yep; trumpets to get everything off to a good start, yep; being very very insistent that they are indeed TwentyfourSevenPartypeople just like that one person you always get a party encouraging everyone to do stupid stuff, also yep.

Tom: Is that really loud and raucous, though? It’s melodic. The volume’s not enough to count as loud and the music’s too tuneful to be raucous.

Tim: Hmm, I’d just about call it that. It is easy to make tracks like this too shouty and annoying – for me the border’s roughly just a tiny bit further than Icona Pop – but this fits just great.

Tom: As with so many things we review, Tim, you’re just more enthusiastic than me. For me, this falls into a twilight zone between “not shouty” and “shouty”, and I don’t think it can rescue itself.

Tim: I disagree – for one, that chorus is just excellent – the “we got loads of trouble” with the strong continuous beat underneath, and then the second half with the trumpet back again for all the triumph. Great stuff, love it.

The Lola O – Rising Sun

“It’d make great background music for some minor-success moments”

Tim: Pair of Swedes for you, one called Freja and one called Fred. Weird name, you might think, but Lola is what a barman misheard Freja’s name as on one night out, and O stands for “one-man orchestra”, as Fred plays all the instruments. Perfectly normal reasoning.

Tim: And that’s an entirely pleasant song.

Tom: But with one of the least promising introductions and first verses I’ve heard in a while. I mean, the word that came to mind was “dull”.

Tim: I wouldn’t go quite that far – admittedly, it’s definitely quieter than it needs to be during the verses, but as I see it the chorus there is absolutely cracking. Annoyingly, it doesn’t make up for the rest of the song enough to make me want to hear it again; on the other hand, if it came on the radio I wouldn’t switch it off, and it’d be a nice addition to a ‘lying on the beach’ playlist, so swings and roundabouts, I guess.

Tom: The chorus just about redeems it each time — just — and it’d make great background music for some minor-success moments in the early rounds of this year’s X Factor. Damning with faint praise, there, I feel.

Tim: Yes. Still, praise is praise, and like I said, it’s perfectly pleasant.