Paaarrtteeee.
“This Is Alphabeat” contains the single ‘Fascination’ the unbelievably catchy toe tapping pop tune and that’s all you need to know. Oh OK then, you want more...It’s easy to assume this album will suffer the plight of many one hit wonder band‘s albums and be a good single and a string of fillers, one listen to the album’s first track and you know that luckily this isn’t the case and Alphabeat are far from a future of being consigned to the one hit wonder basket in Woolworths.
It’s obvious that the band are heavily influenced by 80s pop, but there are so many other influences that find their way in to the tunes and infuse things with a much more interesting edge; punk, hair metal, and indie sounds are also swimming around in between. The main things about the Alphabeat sound to enjoy are that the tunes are very upbeat, they are very danceable and they will leave you with a smile on your face, even though the lyrics are often vacuous and nothing but slogans and there is a layer of 80s cheese coating everything. It’s hard not to get sucked in to the sheer energetic abandonment the record induces, and a lot of this is to do with the fantastic duel girl/boy vocals, they are so convincing that even the seriously dodgy super-airhead pop track ‘Boyfriend’ seems to fit although it sounds like early Madonna.
This is the ultimate party album, poppy, fun and with a slightly more interesting, alternative edge that keeps the cheese at bay; it’s the contrasts that keep things fresh, mixing up tracks like ‘What Is Happening’ which plays like a classic indie-rock track with a melodic sing along chorus and then following it with ‘Go-Go’ a super camp disco tune is what this album from the Copenhagen six piece is all about. OK yes, there are a couple of tracks that transcend the interesting and ironic and become just plain dodgy ‘Touch Me Touching You’ is one, however ‘Rubber Boots’ doesn’t count because it contains the line “You should wear rubber/Always wear rubber” now who could refuse a request like that.