Because we absolutely, positively need more art-pop that sounds like T’Pau’s “Heart and Soul.” It took me forever to place what I was hearing in this standout track from Gang Gang Dance’s engrossing, energetic new album Eye Contact but even before I struck upon what I think is the most direct influence, this song’s project of rehabilitating big sky’s-the-limit mostly English alternative pop sounds from the ’80s had my full support. Everything about it makes me feel like I’m sitting in some teenage bedroom I never had, playing it at full volume and sharing some secret delirious joy with myself. That stop-start beat, with its synth stabs and big flat reverbbing drums, is just made to dance to in your mirror, awkward and uncaring, while Lizzi Bougatsos’ vocals run the impenenetrability of Liz Fraser (another icon of rhapsodic interiority) through a strange Bollywood filter. Which works perfectly, because to me the appeal of all the Big ’80s bands was just how far away their world felt from mine, like these were transmissions of heartache and happiness and emotions too intense to filter down to me as anything but pure excitement, in a secret language of adult glamour I was lucky enough to understand for three or four minutes at a time.
Tags: Eye Contact, Gang Gang Dance, music, music reviews, music time, reviews, Sacer
Hunh! Didn’t expect to see these guys here. Gang Gang Dance opened for Animal Collective @ ATL’s Drunken Unicorn in ’04. Wasn’t sure what to make of their sound at that point, honestly. Have to give ’em a revisit.
I’m given to understand that this record is something of a leap forward. I think it’s a post-Merriwether Post Pavilion record in that you can feel them pouring amorphous electronic psychedelia into more cohesive, bouncy dance-pop molds.