Miike Snow - Miike Snow
A pleasantly meandering electro-pop dream, Miike Snow’s first album isn’t quite what we had expected, but that isn’t to say that it’s without merit.
First off, let’s clear the air here. There’s almost certainly no truth to the urban legend that one third of Miike Snow, Swedish producer Christian Karlsson - aka Bloodshy - is actually the reincarnation of noted Russian mystic, Grigori Rasputin. If the Mad Monk was going to pick a vessel to be reborn into, I rather doubt he’d select a weedy little Swede with no apparent saintly, visionary, prophetic or healing powers to speak of. I’d put my money on Derren Brown.
The self-titled debut somehow isn’t quite as satisfying as a full length from the writing team behind Britney Spears’ 'Toxic' (and a CV of references including Madonna, Kylie and J Lo) really should be and I feel the blame partly lies at the feet of American singer Andrew Wyatt, whose laid-back vocals lack the sexual energy and edge of previous collaborators. That said, opener 'Animal' jauntily bounces off the starting block over a ska beat, dropping lyrical hints about the band’s chameleonic career changes, while 'Burial' tinkles pleasantly despite it’s melancholic message that ‘at your own burial, don’t forget to cry’. On the theme of nonsense lyrics, let’s take a moment to consider 'Sans Soleil' (“How can we expect to build a boat with seagulls running everything?”) and the perplexingly titled 'A Horse Is Not A Home' (no shit, Sherlock). Album highlights include 'Black and Blue', which tiptoes gently along the line between mournful piano-pop and robotic party-friendly synths, alternating between whispers of gloom and falsetto hooks, and 'Plastic Jungle', which hints at the producers' previous triumphs with vocal pants about "getting slain" over a menagerie of computer squawks and growls.
A pleasantly meandering electro-pop dream, Miike Snow’s first album isn’t quite what we had expected, but that isn’t to say that it’s without merit.
Subscribe to the Clickmusic News Feed
