Nouvelle

Some may try to tell you that people who look like an Aryan fantasy shouldn't make music. They may have a point, especially when gazing at Sweden's statuesque Johan Angerg†rd (Acid House Kings, Semester) and Karolina Komstedt, but Club 8's resilient attempts to create louche, gentle cabaret for those trips to the farm go some way to teach listeners that image fetishism in pop music -- on either side of the spectrum -- should never be quite so overstated. Throughout this debut, songs roll and jump like they're on the way to their first barnyard prom, offering hints of sophistication amidst secluded choruses and kinetic, simplistic Blueboy multi-instrumentation. But they also sound like an ineffectual XTC ("She Never Calls Me") just as much as the Wendys if they never crossed the county line ("Breakdown"), which makes the fact that banal lyrics ("I lied to you/to make you happy/it didn't work/cause you knew I was lying"), couched between intimate, pastoral sensitivity, only force the band to end up with the kind of twee indie record to lay out on the coffee table to impress that girl with the Sarah Records T-shirt. ~ Dean Carlson|