Ali Love’s full-length debut is professional, polished and dull as fuck. Bland dance pop with the requisite dash of retro synth, ‘Love Harder’ is not so much bad as pure filler. The album is full of the kind of songs you tolerate in the hope that the DJ will put something more exciting on next. Rising to brief prominence after guesting on the Chemical Brother’s ‘Do It Again’, Ali Love was promptly dropped by Columbia and the evidence suggests that the big boys knew what they were doing. That’s not to say there aren’t the makings of some good songs – ‘Smoke & Mirrors’ is a fairly catchy pop song; ‘Moscow Girl’ wears its ‘80s revival heart on its sleeve; ‘Done The Dirty’ benefits from vocals by New Young Pony Club’s Lou Hayter, and so on. But there’s nothing here that you can’t easily get elsewhere, and better. Part of the problem is that Ali Love desperately wants to be Prince, but my overarching beef with ‘Love Harder’ is that it’s fundamentally an empty experience. This is assembly line dance pop at its most automated. There’s not even much satisfaction in being mean to ‘Love Harder’ – it’d be like curb stomping an egg timer or telling a toaster to go fuck itself.
Listening to Cha-Cha’s debut album is the musical equivalent of having your nipples tweaked by an organ grinder’s monkey for forty minutes. On the ‘disturbing childhood circus entertainers musical enjoyment o-meter’ this reading is on the favourable end of the popular music scale. At the opposite end of the scale (just so you have some terms of reference) is anything that has ever come of out X-Factor – the musical equivalent of being sodomised by a clown. The tightly funky lead single ‘Phonographic Love’, opens ‘We are…Cha-Cha’. This is closely followed (in pace and quality) by the equally catchy ‘Sit You Down’ which is another rather well formed indie lollipop with a dirty disco aftertaste. Think along lines of The Rapture and New Young Pony Club and you’ll be heading in the right direction. ‘Cherokee’ contains a strong indie anthem chorus, some nice harmonies and a toe-tapping rhythm that fizzles through a series of likeable hooks. With ‘Windows’, the final track Cha-Cha are really onto something. The rich, rolling reggae baseline accompanies another sweet pop melody, though the ‘lovely lady’ chorus sounds a bit creepy. Overall, this album is a wet willy from a mime artist on the aforementioned scale.
The ‘New Wave’ conveyer belt continues faster than ever, chucking electro 80′s-like throw back bands, with the sounds of the 21st Century at us faster than we can say….What the fuck are you wearing? Typically, NYPC don’t disappoint in the wardrobe stakes, blinding our eyes with illuminations of unconformity. Leading lady Tahita Bulmer exhibits the more ghastly onstage look, normally always sporting peculiar hairstyles. Sometimes an undercut into a scalp that proudly sports a pony tail amongst other things. Nothing shocks the NYPC fans, this is now common place! Are we the ones that are struggling with conformity?
