HollyWood Music Reviews - February 2011

From disco-pop to smoky blues, don't miss these new release albums.

Sweet medicine

Dismantling the stereotype of feuding band members, trashed hotel rooms and wars of egos, it was a case of friendship first for Kiwi electro disco-pop duo Kids of 88, who have been best mates for 10 years. "Our friendship has been a pretty integral part of our sound. We had to bring our favourite song into English class. This was when boy bands like Backstreet Boys or rappers like 2Pac were prominent. Somehow we both brought along the same album - it was Jimi Hendrix," laughs vocalist Sam McCarthy. The energetic duo knew then that they were on to something, culminating in the breakout success of their debut album, Sugarpills, which reached number one on the iTunes albums chart. With a sound that fuses "a mix of late '80s police drama and a sophisticated super-hussy", the pair have transformed their schoolboy antics into high-octane shows punctuated with throbbing electro dance-pop anthems. And while the guys present all "gangster and glamour", just like a sugar pill "that seems really hard edge, it's also made of soft and good stuff".
Sugarpills (Sony) is out on January 21.


Zonoscope Cut Copy (Modular)

They aren't the only band putting a contemporary stamp on '80s synthpop at the moment, they just do it better than almost anyone else. The Melbourne group's spellbinding third album draws on Electric Light Orchestra's cosmic pop, Depeche Mode's dark balladry and New Order's driving dance-rock as Dan Whitford slips into falsetto to sing about "satellites in the sky" then drops into baritone for the slow, sexy "Need You Now".
Buy this if you like Hot Chip.


Always Want Grace Woodroofe (Universal)

This smoky-voiced blues singer and guitarist from Perth is going to be a star. Ben Harper, who recorded this debut album with Woodroofe in LA, thinks so. So did the late Heath Ledger, who signed her to his fledgling label and is remembered with the elegiac "H". She has the gift of all great singers: the ability to convey powerful emotions while retaining an element of mystery. The result is a very special record.
If you download only one track, make it "Oh My God".


Rolling Blackouts The Go! Team (Shock)

The Go! Team, of Brighton in the UK, sound unlike any other band thanks to founder Ian Parton having a thing for Blaxploitation and Bollywood movies, hip-hop, '60s girl groups and distorted guitars. It sounds like an aural car crash, but The Go! Team corral these disparate sounds into coherent songs with names like "Apollo Throwdown", "Bust-Out Brigade" and "Lazy Poltergeist". It's pop, Jim, but not as we know it.



Buy this if you like Arcade Fire.
You heard it here first...
Lucky Pineapple. You're never quite sure where a song from this Louisville, Kentucky, band will take you. Its nine members switch between punk, surf, jazz, funk and prog sounds to make an exotic, but delicious indie stew.