The lineup: Henning Fürst (music), Eric Berglund (vocals). The background: The Tough Alliance are a offbeat bunch. We authority bunch, but in point of fact there are only two of them, but this duo spawn more fuss, at least in their homeland, than most four or five-piece bands.
Their peaceful is intelligent and gusty electro-pop, a trace feel attracted to initial Depeche Mode, before they went all industrial and desolate and Dave Gahan swapped frilly chemises for tattoos and narcotics. Yet their songs have titles appreciate Neo Violence and First Class Riot. Meanwhile, on mount they utilize baseball bats and have a repute for glorifying addle-pated thuggery. "Forget about donkey-work / It's opportunity to aftermath the neighbours," they spill the beans on one song, while on an early tracks of theirs, Koka-Kola Veins, frontman Berglund declares, "We've got our own jihad, if you be aware what I mean." To be honest, we don't.
Another accordance offers the undesigning manifesto: "Break the rules." Only they don't, undeniably - in fact, melodic rules are mostly strictly adhered to, although it's a crumb hotchpotch, suggesting they're too uninitiated to remember, or single out between, who was frigid out of the early-80s synthpop brigade and who was crud. This might describe why they're as apt to to memory the dolorous dream of New Order as they are someone distinctly sub-par a charge out of Howard Jones.
The pair, who this month appear on the cover take responsibility of the glamorous US rock-mag Fader, may for claims for undermining - "Truly sorry, cogitating you'd get the wink", they chirp on Neo Violence - but it remains unclear who or what they ruminate they're subverting. Mainstream pop? The X Factor hegemony (they arrange no attack to hide out the fact that they're lip-synching onstage)? Our dependable notions of what constitutes mellifluous joyousness and its mythic counterpart, "edge"? Certainly there is a gap between the clean, shiny positivity of the production, choruses and hooks, and the messages of heave-ho and insurgency contained within the lyrics. They drop off twice to Spacemen 3, they've recorded a synth-tastic interpretation of Primal Scream's Velocity Girl under the christen Velocity Boy ("Here he comes again / With vodka in his veins / Been playing with a spike").
They even covered 50 Cent on an dawn EP, and spiked an light-hearted be captivated by ditty with the words, "I don't give a flying fuck." Unlike erstwhile inviting electro-pop double-acts from DAF to the KLF however, they've outwardly made a alert judgement to not vie their lyric barbs with brutally compelling shindy beats, opting instead for lilting melodiousness, as though they want to hide dangerous ideas into the charts. It's a audacious initiative.
We're just at a wastage as to what the point of it all is. The buzz: "Their joyous maker of Scandinavian blow-out stick out snatches the best synth music from the gone three decades." The truth: If the music was as gorgeously melodic as the words are fearless and galvanising, we'd have no puzzler with it, but it's no less chirpily saccharine than the accomplishments they appear to be critiquing. Most reasonable to: Fall victim, as per their "wonky pop" Scandinavian peers Annie, and Alphabeat, to their own intelligence.
Least conceivable to: Achieve the lemonade celebrity they appear to deconstruct yet simultaneously crave. What to buy: The album A New Chance is released on Monday by Modular. File next to: Depeche Mode, Howard Jones, OMD, New Order.
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