Boat Club
Caught The Breeze EP
Luxury Records, 2007
By Sal Hassanpour
This band is the most pleasant surprise of the year 2007. This duo from Gothenburg are doing all sorts of things right, and none of it has to do with any of Sweden’s best-known musical genres (funeral metal, garage, disco-tech, and twee pop).
Actually, that last bit isn’t exactly true. They are pretty dance-y, and kind of soft too. Imagine taking Junior Boys back in time to nineties Manchester and you’ve got Boat Club. In other words, here is the recipe for a Boat Club track:
2 parts guitar in the style of John Squire of the Stone Roses
2 parts bouncy beats derived from a TB-303 in the style of 808 State or Andrew Weatherall
1 part lysergic vocals in style of shoegaze acts like Jesus and Mary Chain and Slowdive
Combine all ingredients and simmer on low to acquire a reverb reduction glaze.
Smooth.
The Junior Boys is an apt reference, not only because Boat Club is a bedroom techno-pop duo but also because both bands share an inclination for serving up a good side of wistfulness with the main course, so that “Always Away” complains that “You’re always away/On rainy days” and “Warmer Climes” confesses that “I lose my mind/for warmer climes/but I can’t stay forever/cuz you, you can’t face the sunshine”. Even if it were possible to relate to that last sentiment in forty degree Celsius weather, it takes some effort to actually make the words out through the fat acid-house basslines, the jangly guitar, and the banks of reverberated synths.
That said, the lyrics aren’t excruciatingly terrible. I understand that Boat Club is going for the kind of yearning sentiment Bernard Sumner would hardwire into the best New Order tracks, as evident in the more lyrically-heavy (and lyrically-successful) “Memories” and “Spanish Castles”. However Boat Club doesn’t seem nearly as desperate to hit the benchmark, so half the time they come off as weak-kneed.
Nevertheless, as perhaps the first nineties-revivalist band, Boat Club have cherry-picked all the sounds that made music alive and exciting fifteen years ago and have slow-cooked them to perfection, emerging with an EP where each track sounds almost identical to the previous one but is still worthy of at least several dozen listens. This one comes highly recommended.
Buy a copy at http://www.luxxury.se/index2.html
