Rockin' Our Turntable: The Sounds
By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 1, 2009 6:20PM
We think it's safe to say that The Sounds have no interest in really engaging you on an intellectual level. You can probably also bet that The Sounds don't care if you call 'em a retro act. All this Swedish quintet seem focused on is throwing a hell of a dance rock party colored by bright neon. We suspect they wouldn't mind at all if you were to pin them as New Romantics.
What separates them from the time of Duran Duran, and what makes them so successful at breathing new life into the genre they unabashedly embrace, is the exuberant brawn muscling through each of their songs. Singer Maja Ivarsson manages to pull off a brash jubilation that will have you pogoing madly three seconds into any given tune. Surging synths, piercing guitars, grand choruses, and fist pumping love songs are all delivered with the same sense of balls-out abandon. And live ... man, suffice to say that the band never allows the energy to ever ebbs, leaving anyone within earshot exhausted and sweating by set's end.
On record, The Sounds have steadily grown better at capturing that zest, and 2006's Dying To Say This To You did an excellent job of chronicling the band's strengths (the melodies, those rhythms) and largely glossing over their weaknesses. Their latest album, Crossing the Rubicon, continues that trend. The massive beats on the backwards looking "Beatbox" work perfectly to bolster Ivarsson's update of the Debby harry style rap, and the rock-disco choruses of "My Lover" rescue the song from its saccharine intro. "4 Songs and A Fight" and "Dorchester Hotel" should do a good job of motivating punk rawk girls to choreograph aerobic routine for their mascara wearing boyfriends.
All of this stuff should turn us off to the band, if you really think about it, and by the end of the album the group has begun to wear a bit thin in their strip mining of the past. But ultimately we find ourselves returning to the disc again and again; it buoys our mood, keeps us smile, and urges us to dance, and it's then that we remember that some of the best rock and/or roll is the stuff that raises our serotonin levels and turns us on with its simple pleasures. Crossing the Rubicon succeeds at those objectives on all levels.
Check out our photos from their Chicago show last month