Genres: Pop, Alternative Dance, Indie-Rock,
I have never heard of this band before this album and I was pleasantly surprised that this is actually a really fun record that sounds like all of the pop music from the 1980's condensed into forty-minutes. My partner picked this off the shelves at a music store because it looked pretty and I went along with it, I was pleasantly surprised. What I didn't know is this band has been making music that sounds like the 1980's since the year 2000 and have been very successful in doing so. This band has a big shiny sound, much like all the reviled pop bands from the eighties, but they are sneaky in expanding those sounds into indie-rock and dance that should prevent even the most cynical from heaping Phoenix in with that dated sound.
This band is French and I think they have interpreted the American pop music of the eighties as outsiders and then reinvented it into a familiar but wholly different thing. Pop and rock music do this all the time and it is great to see creativity added to a type of music that a lot of people can only enjoy ironically (such as Eric Carman's song 'Hungry Eyes').
The first four tracks on this record are all winners. They had me humming their tunes all week even though the cheesiness of the sound can make one weary. The energy and the mood are everything, these tracks kick off a gleeful quick run of shiny sounds and big choruses. The lyrics and the vocals lend more to the music than the other way around. The title track, placed at number five on the track list is a good departure, having a slow build with a keyboard and stretching out over seven minutes. Then it is straight back into whizzing verse-chorus-verse giddiness.
This is pop music that people can dance to as well as pump on earphones by themselves to decipher the quirky lyrics. I had a lot of fun with this.
RATING: 4/5 stars
Lead single 'Entertainment' below - very good!
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