6

Not so special

"Hey, hey, back to the eighties", I said as I chucked this monkey into me machine. From the very opening of 'Special', the instrumentation sounds like a mishmash of New Order basslines with electronic drums. Overlay this with meltingly snoozy vocals that echo the Pet Shop Boys and JJ72 on mogadon and basically that's the single.

Jonas Bjerre, frontman of this Danish four-piece apparently gets his best ideas in the middle of the night - this probably explains a lot.
The influences are there in evidence; you can't escape them, the band fail to take them to anything like a new level.
'Apocolypso' is a bit more like it, in much the same vein, but with a few geeetars to beef it up a bit. The video reminded me of some Pet Shop Boys output too, all monochrome and European arty. Well shot and nice if you like that sort of thing.

Both tracks are from their freshly released 'concept' album 'And The Glass Handed Kites', so maybe it all makes more sense when listening to that. I like a nice story. So you could look at it two ways, an intriguing little morsel to entice you in to the album's realm, or mildly disappointing but soporific. At least a mug of hot chocolate tastes nice.