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Album Reviews
Album Review: Club 8 – The People’s Record (Labrador)
By Marc Samuels | Published on Friday 30 April 2010
Sweden’s Club 8 emerged at the start of the noughties with a non-too-original but deftly executed sound – twee indie pop mixing guitars, electronics and dreamy female vocals with more than a nod to the likes of Saint Etienne, Trembling Blue Stars and Air.
Their sound has evolved subtly over the course of six albums, but their seventh sees the biggest departure yet, with the duo’s Brazilian travels providing much in the way of inspiration.
It could conceivably have turned out to be an unedifying mélange but, thankfully it’s anything but – the melodic touch and pop nous of songwriter Johan Angergard is still a perfect foil for the languid uber-glacial vocals of Karolina Komstedt, but the carnival atmosphere (fuelled by a treasure chest of colourful percussion) helps to create a heady concoction of African rhythms, Latin exuberance and icy Scandinavian cool.
‘Dancing With The Mentally Ill’ hints at the melancholy of earlier material, but there’s still a vibrancy at heart, as on the similarly amusingly-titled ‘We’re All Going To Die’, which is brilliantly, improbably jaunty.
‘The Peoples Record’: sun-kissed pop for that chill in your heart, then. MS
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