Politely Ornate: The Melting Ice Caps

Luxembourg was an English indie band that lasted from 2001 to early this year, and I wish I had been aware of them before their split. They had the melodrama and vocal warble of Roxy Music paired with witty lyrics worthy of Jarvis Cocker, but after only officially releasing one album and before the second album was completely finished, they disbanded. However, lead singer David Shah went on to create a solo project called The Melting Ice Caps, an equally offbeat, but achingly genuine affair with an operatic, literate flair akin to The Divine Comedy. Thus far, The Melting Ice Caps have released two official singles: the double A-side for Hard to Get and Don't Say a Word, and Selfish Bachelor with its B-side How to Appear Well-Adjusted. In addition to these, two tracks, namely I Wanted to Be Your Boyfriend and If I Should Ever Lose, are also up to stream from the MySpace page. There's something theatrical and gentlemanly about these songs - despite their electropop flourishes, it's as though they would sound perfect from a phonograph that sits on a table by an art deco wrought iron balcony that overlooks a verdant park full of people on pennyfarthings. These songs are quietly stylish. These songs are politely ornate.

Hard to Get is a wonderful bitter ballad that bears throat-catching similarities to Soft Cell's Say Hello, Wave Goodbye. Don't Say a Word is a beautifully verbose plea for a lover's reciprocation, utilizing some of the most evocative words in the English language in the process. Selfish Bachelor begins with listing all the things the narrator doesn't have, a list which seems to imprison him more than all the freedom he purportedly has. Its music is melancholy but passionately romantic, fitting seamlessly with the brilliant line "I do know love like I know being alone." How to Appear Well-Adjusted is a plonking, knocking vaudeville track that recalls the wry humour found in several Luxembourg tracks, including advice like "Gentlemen should keep their stubble short/And so should ladies." Shah muses over how one can show oneself as "normal" and uses a list of what at first seems like an archaic etiquette manual; then he mentions the 21st century faux-pas of posting an angry blog or sending an email without thinking, which feels both delightfully familiar and anachronistic. I Wanted to Be Your Boyfriend is the most synthpoppy of all the songs so far, but it lacks the pumping beat that would push it into dancefloor territory; instead, this song floats along like a spring breeze. In contrast, If I Should Ever Lose is a violin-based track with Shah's vocals at their most mournful, demonstrating that Shah has several facets yet to explore to their fullest.

I eagerly await further material and hopefully a full album in the near future. The narrators of these songs are lovelorn, but though they may be as doomed and fragile as ice floes in warm seas, they will take out clean handkerchiefs and ask for your pardon over the mess.

The Melting Ice Caps MySpace: www.myspace.com/themeltingicecaps

How to Appear Well-Adjusted - The Melting Ice Caps

Hard to Get - The Melting Ice Caps

We Only Stayed Together For the Kids - Luxembourg

Everyday is Like Sunday, Except for Blue Monday and Ruby Tuesday, and...Well, Friday I'm in Love: Weekly Mix #33

I've been realizing that within the past few years my music collection is not only growing in the anglophilic way but in a Scandinavian (scandinavilic?) way as well. I've been amassing music from all four corners of Scandinavia, especially in the genres of electro and jangle pop. Oddly enough, as much travelling as I've done in Europe, I've never been to any of the Scandinavian countries, but I always have this image in my mind of clean, progressive places where post-secondary education is free and society is more open. And everything would be . Up until about four years ago, I hadn't really thought of Scandinavian music at all. Sure, I liked the Danish Raveonettes and Norwegian Sondre Lerche, and I didn't like the Swedish Hives, and I was well aware of the disco behemoth ABBA, the music video prowess of a-ha, and the fact a lot of pop tarts and boy bands had their songs written by Swedes, but I didn't really think about how many truly exceptional bands and artists come from the Nordic countries.

Sweden, especially Gothenburg, seems to dominate the music scene in what would seem a rather disproportionate way. In fact, it's such a prolific scene that there's an MP3 blog dedicated just to Swedish music: Swedesplease. The sheer amount of material coming out of that country deserves its own IKEA storage system, and I will not attempt to give any comprehensive look at Swedish music, let alone all Norwegian, Danish and Finnish music as well. For a start, you can visit specific record labels that focus specifically on Scandinavian artists (at the moment Labrador, Despotz and Cosy Den come to mind). Scandinavian artists pillage older genres like Motown, surf rock, synthpop, and jangle pop to come up with some of the tweest and memorable pop tunes. At the other end of the spectrum, Scandinavian countries also seem to produce a lot of death metal. I don't like death metal.

(Relatively Random Tangent: I also think Scandinavians have created the patent for visually striking blonde-brunette duos, starting with ABBA, but continuing through The Raveonettes and The Deer Tracks.)

Because I had so many Scandinavian artists, I decided to make this mix a bit of a megamix with 28 tracks. Of course Sweden has the lion's share of artists featured (The Knife, Alice in Videoland, Zeigeist, The Tough Alliance, Air France, The Radio Dept., The Deer Tracks, The Cardigans, Twig, Peter, Bjorn and John, Elenette, Blind Terry, Irene, Pelle Carlberg, The Mary Onettes, The Sound of Arrows, El Perro Del Mar, Club 8), but there are also bands from Norway (Don Juan Dracula, Lorraine, a-ha, Bedroom Eyes, Sondre Lerche), Finland (Viola, Cats on Fire) and Denmark (The Raveonettes, Mew, Windermere). You get your electropop from the likes of The Knife, Alice in Videoland and The Tough Alliance while you get some truly airy and pretty tunes from The Deer Tracks, The Radio Dept. and Mew and some wonderful C86 from Blind Terry, Bedroom Eyes, El Perro Del Mar and Irene. And check out the Edwyn Collinsesque vocals of Twig. So put on your cultural stereotype hat, grab some meatballs, quickly assemble a chair to sit on and take a listen. I'll call this mix No Death Metal.

You Take My Breath Away - The Knife

Candy - Alice in Videoland

Sad Eyed Disco Dancers - Viola

No Control - Don Juan Dracula

Pressurized Chamber - Zeigeist

Touch Me - Lorraine

Living a Boy's Adventure Tale - a-ha

1981 - The Tough Alliance

Collapsing at Your Doorstep - Air France

Pulling Our Weight - The Radio Dept.

Slow Collision - The Deer Tracks

Am I Wry? No - Mew

Here Comes Mary - The Raveonettes

Lovefool - The Cardigans

Indigo - Twig

There's a Sun - Windermere

(Here's One For You) Underdog - Bedroom Eyes

The Chills - Peter, Bjorn and John

Jag hatar män - Elenette

The White Mantled King - Cats on Fire

When Prefab Sprout Wrecked My Mind - Blind Terry

Baby I Love Your Way - Irene

1983 (Pelle and Sebastian) - Pelle Carlberg

Void - The Mary Onettes

A Very Sad Song - The Sound of Arrows

People - El Perro Del Mar

Track You Down - Sondre Lerche

The Girl With the Northern Soul Collection - Club 8



Weekly Mix #33 (Megaupload)

Take Me to an Owl Sanctuary: Hemme Fatale

I first heard about Welsh band Hemme Fatale via Fluxblog's brief post about them, and I immediately went to their MySpace page to check them out. Their rather clever name aside, Luke, Ellie and Jen produce some very fun and witty electro-pop. Their track Animal Lover, which includes the line "I know a girl who says/she wants to take me to an owl sanctuary/the second biggest in the country," made me think immediately of Alan Partridge and his Valentines Day trip to the owl sanctuary, and I'm big enough to admit that this fact swayed me as much as, if not more than, the music itself.

Fluxblog described them as influenced by The Human League, which I can hear, but they've got a looser style and an unhinged quality that comes with making music for kicks. For example, Animal Lover begins with a massive disco intro before going into grimier beats that have been popularized lately with groups like Justice. Baby Witch begins with a distorted retro 60's sound before settling into electropop featuring a duet of male and female voices that play off each other - there is a time about one minute into the song when the female half slips into that vocal riff from Islands in the Stream, but which bears most resemblance to the Pras and Mya's updated version in Ghetto Superstar. And Hag in a Black Leather Jacket shimmies to a Latin beat before moving into 80's synthpop and then back again. What truly stands out about Hemme Fatale is their sense of fun and humour, which reminds me of Robots in Disguise in places, and since there are times when I weary of bands taking themselves too seriously, Hemme Fatale provide the perfect antidote.

Their debut Silent Sleepover EP includes the following tracklisting as elaborated on by the group themselves:

"1. Peryglus Lucifer - a song about the darkest party this side of Austria.
2. Animal Lover - a song about the dirtiest girl this side of Merthyr.
3. Baby Witch - a song about the devil in your womb.
4. Hag in a Black Leather Jacket - a song about the despised."

My favourites are, of course, Animal Lover and Peryglus Lucifer, a song which features vocals from Aled Phillips from Kids in Glass Houses and grooves along to a funky beat and snatches of 80's girl group sounds. Also for your information, "peryglus" is Welsh for "dangerous," which indeed Lucifer is to most people. Unless maybe you're Aleister Crowley. I look forward to hearing how Hemme Fatale develop, and hopefully, there will soon be a full album release.


Hemme Fatale's MySpace: www.myspace.com/hemmefatale

Animal Lover - Hemme Fatale

Hag in a Black Leather Jacket - Hemme Fatale

Waiting For Velocifero: The Latest From Ladytron

I can hardly wait for June 3, which happens to be the release date for the latest Ladytron album, Velocifero. To tide everyone over, Ladytron has put the entire album up streaming on their MySpace, which may make buying the album in June a bit anti-climactic for some people, but I'm nonetheless excited to get the physical album in my hands. Named after an Italian scooter, Velocifero definitely continues to propel the band further, perfectly fusing rock sensibilities with electronic fuzz and synths. The album ends up sounding like a Velocifero - cool, vintage, sleek, fast and undeniably European.

Black Cat, which is available for free download from the band's Web site , is an electric album opener with a tingling upper register contrasting with a rumbling lower one. Ghosts, the first single to be released off this album, swaggers along like a rock god for the verses and then kicks into a sing-song, see-saw chorus, ending with electronic bliss and what sounds like a gong. I'm Not Scared sounds like a reckless ride along a French motorway, both light and airy, but also frantic enough to turn your pulse to quicksilver. Speeding in I'm Not Scared's wake, Runaway, a track which features a fantastic beat, blends all that was good about '80's synth music as the vocals straddle icy and sweet like a sexed-up robot. Sounding like a proper Depeche Mode song should, Burning Up twinkles and blinks like a candy-coloured strobe light, and carries hints of Destroy Everything You Touch. Kletva, along with Black Cat, is one of the two songs of the album completely sung in Bulgarian by band member, Mira Aroyo, and it bounces around in several directions at once like a gypsy on amphetamines. Apparently, Kletva is a cover of a '70's Bulgarian folk-rock song by Shturcite. The track, Predict the Day, is reminiscent of Simian Mobile Disco with its fuzzy and twitchy rhythms, while Lovers, a briefer song, features chunkier rhythms under breezy vocals. Deep Blue moves back into lighter, splintery beats with splashes of sound effects and synths vibrating like speeding tires over pavement. The closing track of the album, Versus, features some male vocals in addition to the regular female ones, and it works blindingly well. It boggles my mind just how Ladytron continue to impress me, keeping their signature sound, but creating such brilliant melodies and beats that always sound fresh.

It's nice to have an incredible album from one of my favourite bands to look forward to this summer. After all, Destroy Everything You Touch is one of the most perfectly crafted songs of all time. Anyone who believes differently deserves to be run over by a Velocifero.

Black Cat - Ladytron

Ghosts - Ladytron

Runaway - Ladytron

Beginning 2008 Properly: Hot Chip's Made in the Dark

London's electro band Hot Chip has been one of the year's first buzz bands with their third album, Made in the Dark, due to release on February 4 in the UK (EMI) and February 5 (DFA) in the US. I know because I've been specifically tracking blogs about Made in the Dark for my masters thesis (it's a case study at the moment) and there have been loads of blogs about this album reaching as far back as early December. So, really this review is considered to be way too late in the timeline of the blogosphere. Yes, it's still being written before the album is even officially released, but that's just not fast enough anymore. However, I thought I'd weigh in on the Hot Chip hype because I've liked the band for a couple of years now.

In my opinion, Made in the Dark is a nice compromise between their first albums Coming on Strong and The Warning - the former was generally more laidback than the latter - but it also reaches out in other new directions. Hot Chip has always had a quirky groove to their brand of electropop and never quite fit with the New Rave (whatever that really means) label they were given after The Warning. They definitely don't fit neatly into a Klaxons-like box. Their music seems to defy genre in that it plays with all sorts of rhythms and styles, including funk, soul, European electro, and electro punk. Vocals are always airy, even when the music beneath them is frenetic.

On Made in the Dark, the title track stands out as an unexpected piano-based ballad, but it works - its heartbroken delivery gives the likes of Badly Drawn Boy a run for their money. One of my favourite tracks is One Pure Thought with its great, memorable riff and a quasi-tropical beat behind it - it has been stuck in my brain for the last few days. Out at the Pictures begins with a low hum and a dragging beat, but one minute into it, and it becomes a syncopated jackhammer of a rhythm. Another minute in and the rhythm shifts gear again with what sounds like a sleazy horn backup - Mark Ronson would be proud. Shake a Fist, which has been around since last year, especially in remixed form, is another crazy collection of twists and turns that shifts from a flamenco beat into a laser war. Ready for the Floor, the first official single, is a breezy dance track with some bouncy flourishes that remind me of Of Montreal's latest album. A few of the tracks also feature spoken word snippets, adding further to the pastiche feel of the album.

Overall, Made in the Dark diverges and converges, proving that electronic music can still be surprising and intensely creative. And it will probably be on the list of best albums of 2008. With the speed of the bloggers, it likely already is.

Made in the Dark - Hot Chip

One Pure Thought - Hot Chip

Out at the Pictures - Hot Chip