Lesley Gore’s 1963 hit It’s My Party has been covered by a number of artists over the years, most notably by male and female duo Dave Stewart and Barbara Gaskin (and just for the record, no it wasn’t Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics) who hit number 1 in the UK in 1981 with their top-notch version of the song.
Now Sweden’s Icona Pop who had their own UK chart topper earlier in 2013 with the brilliant I Love It (a song that we shamefacedly never featured on Breaking More Waves even though we’ve been fans of theirs since 2011 as well as Charli XCX who co-wrote the song with Patrik Berger and Linus Eklöw since 2009) have grabbed the chorus and turned it into something freakily weird and downright mental with Zebra Katz.
We also quite like the fact that someone using the obviously wrongly spelt name Justin Baber has commented with the word ‘Yaaas’ on the Soundcloud player at 2.38. Imagine if real pop stars did actually sit at home posting comments on other artists Soundcloud and You Tube streams. “Bitch you stole my thunder,” Lady Gaga could type on Katy Perry and Ellie Goulding’s You Tube. Or maybe Bon Iver could let Birdy know that “this version of Skinny Love isn’t as good as mine.”Maybe if Lesley Gore has access to the internet she could post a comment on this? Icona Pop featuring Zebra Katz - My Party
After another week of scouring the internet for musical goodness, there’s just never enough time in the day to post everything we’d like to. So we arrive at the Saturday Surf to pick up the pieces and at least give a tiny bit of exposure to a few tracks that we’d like you to put before you, the great jury of the internet, for consideration. It’s as simple as that. There are four diamonds in the rough this week. Here we go.
Dog Is Dead – Hands Down
Released on 31 Oct Nottingham five-piece Dog Is Dead return with this new single Hands Down. It’s an ambitious indie pop song that sprawls itself across the vast themes of love, religion and death – yes, these guys are not singing about being ‘in da club.’ With forthcoming support slots with Bombay Bicycle Club and an album due for release next year, Hands Down gets our thumbs up.
From mini album A Balloon Called Moaning to debut album The Big Roar, The Joy Formidable have assaulted our ear drums in the most electrifying of ways and this newly recorded version of fan favourite Anemone from the forthcoming The Big More EP (see what they’ve done there?) continues the offensive by stealth – politely nuzzling the ears before getting the wrench out and yanking them off, dancing in the jets of blood. Yes, the quiet, quiet, quiet LOUD, quiet, LOUD format still works very well indeed. Even louder than Anemone though is this monumental ten minute live version of Whirring which fully captures the essence and spirit of The Joy Formidable – it's guaranteed to raise a tingle down your spine as the drums and guitars high-kick their way through the door of Mogwai like noise at around three minutes.
Away from the maelstrom of noise and melody of indie rocking guitars we turn a page to find the tasty elegance of Queen of Hearts and the lead track from her debut Arrival EP, from which various tracks have been cropping up on-line and on this blog over the year. Produced by Swedish electropop princes The Sound Of Arrows, Shoot The Bullet drips with 80's synth sounds that are as classy as champagne nicely chilled and poured into a perfectly manufactured glass.
Finally, taken from the Nights Like This EP (out October 10 through Mercury Records) this new Icona Pop single is a fantastic slice of alt. pop – with menacing troll-monster voices, gang harmonies and grinding synth riffs a-go-go. What’s not to like about this?
This February when we first introduced Sweden’s Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo aka Icona Pop we concluded that their music made us want to do just one thing and that was have sex. This is because fundamentally amazing pop music is sexy. We've commented on it before but like all important things it's worth saying again; the pop single is the ultimate f*ck buddy, grinding itself up against you, wanting you to give it as much attention as possible before discarding it for something longer lasting – the dreaded album. There are very few pop artists that make the transition from great singles to even better albums. Pop is usually too eager to jump into bed and pump away that it forgets the subtleties that make up the delicate chemistry of the high quality long player. Of course there are some that do make it - and it does depend how we define pop - but we’d present Happiness by Hurts, Body Talk by Robyn and Lights by Ellie Goulding as pop albums that have tickled our fancy in the last year or so, each remaining works that we haven’t kicked out of our musical bed yet.
It’s far too early to say what will happen with Icona Pop. By now we feel like we’ve got naked with the band and got the messy stuff out of the way. Now we’re waiting for the second and third dates and we’ll see how they go.
Today Icona Pop released the video for Manners, a song that featured in our original February blog post. Watch it as if it was musical pornography, but don’t feel the guilt.
Let’s play a game. Let’s call it ‘Good Pop Bad Pop.’ Good pop is intelligent, it’s stylish, it’s cool, it’s about fantasy, but it’s still real and it’s not just sexy but actually one hundred per cent makes you want to have sex. Right now. With anyone. Good pop is more than just about good songs – it’s a concept, a lifestyle and it’s something that no matter how much it is derided by the arty / indie / hipsters will fill many more people’s lives with joy than the typical lo-fi blog band.
Good pop is Kylie Minogue, The Pet Shop Boys, Hurts, Robyn and Girls Aloud. Bad pop is Westlife, Justin Bieber and Joe McElderry.
The UK is pretty damn good at producing good pop. We have a history that stretches back to The Beatles. But there’s another country that gives the UK a run for its money – Sweden. From Abba to the aforementioned Robyn, from The Cardigans to Lykke Li, Sweden is the pop princess waiting to usurp the queen – particularly when it comes to female vocal pop. Now here’s another example of good pop and the word is even in their name – Icona Pop.
Icona Pop is Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo from Stockholm, Sweden. Things we know about Icona Pop: Their favourite Catherine Deneuve movie is Dancer in the Dark (a good choice – the second best Lars Von Trier film after the brilliantly named Breaking the Waves), their favourite writer is Prince and they are addicted to Mozzarella sticks.
Previously touched by Kitsune this girl-girl duo are very much doing good pop. They’ve got girlish chanted choir choruses, bubbly computerised sounds and rhythmic elements that crash, wallop and jive in all sorts of directions. It’s inventive, colourful and very accessible. Listen to Still Don’t Know - a melee between The Go Team, Cults and Lykke Li with the hookiest schoolyard chorus you will hear this year and the squelchier, rubbery bubble-gum electronica of Manners and you’ll understand why right now there’s only one thing we want to do.
