Skivrecension: Le Kid - Oh Alright!

Isn't it about time that we talk a little about Le Kid's album Oh Alright?



With the America single out Monday (yay!) and the secret of me having this album out since my review in the March number of QX (it was supposed to be released in March, but then it was pushed to June for some reason), I really think it's time to discuss this album song-by-song.

It's also about time I try to write something in English;

A) just for the fun of it
B) to see if I can
C) since people with English as their native tongue seems (up until now at least) more likely to be as obsessed with the band as I am
and
D) I wrote the QX stuff in Swedish so I think I need to vary myself and I think this is a record that has to be kept written about

So please don't kill me (but feel free to correct my bad grammar) and here we go!

We are the Drums


"BPM won't give me salvation, I don't feel the facination"

The album starts with a track that seems to be designed to be a single somewhere down the road. It's a perfect "jump-up-and-down-infront-of-the-stage-or-on-the-dance-floor-song" complete with a na-na-na-part and a vocoder-stick. This is perhaps the closest to a rock song you'll get by Le Kid, so if that's what you looking for you should probably stay here (but that would be rather stupid I can tell you).

Mercy, Mercy


"We are the drop out uncle in your family"

OK. We all know the first song was a lie. They're not the drums. They're the L-E, the K-I-D as famously stated in their first hit, and even if I have heard this song probably a thousand times during the two years it has resided in my iPod, I still like it. With emphasis on like, 'cause I used to blindly love it… But times change, and Mercy, Mercy unfortenately lost a bit of its grandeur to its good looking, easier-to-love, siblings.

Oh look, here's the video.




America


"You can't imagine how much, or how bad, I want your skin on mine"

The new single. Without doubt one of the best, possibly the best, track of the album. This song has echoes of both Pet Shop Boys and Army of Lovers' Obsession, but has at the same time very much its own beautiful identity as a midtempo, pop-perfect musical achievment of gigantic proportions. A friend of mine called it "one of the five best Swedish pop songs ever written". Well, that's also a pretty good review, dontcha think? Out Monday. Buy it.


Oh My God


"Like a teenage dream it's a love supreme"

One of 2011's best Melodifestivalenbidrag – and probably the funniest stage show of this year – should have got a 5/5 on any other record (just for the "love, love, love, love, love, this love, love, love, love, love, must have been love, love, love, love, love, this is love"-parts and the "oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh"-parts) but here the competition is fierce! But I still think it should have been in the final, of course. And have won.


Bigger Than Jesus


"I wanna feel your heart tonight, I wanna feel you by my side, I want you to get me high"

Actually the last of the tracks on this album I got my hands on, and I can confess it wasn't love at first sight. Since I already had a midtempo-darling in America and a dito favourite in Escape, what was I supposed to do with this kindered spirit? Well, the answer was simple: Love it equaly much of course! This might be the closest Le Kid would come to a ballad, but with its beautiful synth-solo (can I dream of hearing it from a keytar on stage?) and its beautiful, organic electroblips in the background it's not exactly a My Heart Will Go On kinda ballad. For a track with such a big title it is actually wonderfully low key and adorable. Loves it.


Kiss Me


"I've been sublime, if you wanna I could pour some wine, I would dim out the lights and put on Barry White"

You might notice that most of the top graded songs in this review represent the melodic, soft, electrobased, not-so-much-for-the-schlagerfans side of Le Kid. Well, that's the side of the band I love the most, and the songs which most easily fits into my usual iPhone playlists. But as you all know the Mercy, Mercy- and Oh My God- retro, chorus-that-glues-to-your-brain-side of the band is the side that the wider audiences love them for, and I'd say this is the crown jewel in that bunch of songs.

Kiss Me is actually a Melodifestivalen reject from 2010 (OMG! What did that jury go for? Py Bäckman-hits?) and sort of a love child of Scissor Sisters I Can't Decide (a song I also totally adore) and Lily Allens Fuck You - but sprinkled with pure joy and cute puppy love. When I play it for friends nobody gets it (so I guess OMG was a better MF debute for the band) but I'm proud as a (*insert something proud*) to have it all for myself if that's also the case with the rest of the world. When the "kiss kiss kiss-part" flies between the speakers it's the perfect antidote if you're sad or having a shitty day…and shouldn't all good popsongs should be designed for that?


We Should Go Home Together

"If this is real, I wanna do it again"

It used to be one of my absolute favourites of the bunch, but I guess I have played it about 200 times to much since the fantastic video appeard a year ago, so now I just love it. By the way; all songs should have at least three orchestral hits! I love that sound in a pop song.

Oh look, here's the video. Still worship that. Sailors galore! O'hoy!




Seventeen


"I can be cute, I can be dumb, and I'm not even illegally young, if you're mine tonight"

Remember the "two sides of Le Kid" I talked about in the Kiss Me-review above (if you don't, you seriously should check yourself for miscellaneous diseases)? Well, this might be the song that tries to combine both these sides, since the verses and choruses seem a bit more far related than in other songs - and I guess I'm not totally comfortable with that. It's an okej album track, no doubt about it, but since all other tracks on this perfect album sound like singles in my ears, this song gets the dubious honor of being some sort of an ugly duckling. Sad but true. But hey, that’s me, and maybe it will turn into a swan sometimes in the future? I'll hope for it to be amazing live!


Telephone


"Last night was buzzin' and now I wanna score again – in a back seat bingo with you"

Useless fact part 1: This song has been the signal on my phone for so long I always grab for my iPhone when it starts on my iPod (true, I'm really not that smart).
Useless fact part 2: This was the first song I ever heard with the band.
Important fact: I still love it! It has some of the best and most complex lyrics on the album, one of the most easy accessible choruses (it gets stuck in your head the first time your hear it), a fantastic production (just listen to all the different ways the girls voices are treated – genius) AND it allows for some crazy dancing.Important fact 2: Lady Gaga & Beyonce released their song after I first heard Le Kid's, but of course some fantastic songs have previously been written about telephones; Ring Ring, She's on the Phone, Call Your Girlfriend, The Call, Call Me (Spagna, Pipettes & Blondie versions) and of course Telefon by Style.


Escape


"You started out my golden boy, but then the colours started to fade for us"

Undoubtedly the most brittle and ethereal track on the record. It has a dazzling feeling of floating-on-clouds for the first one-and-a-half-minute or so, and when you didn't think it could get any more beautiful, it puts in another gear and uppens the beat, adds some strings and just knocks you out of the comfortable pop-armchair you've just sunk yourself into. One of the best endings of a record since Scissor Sisters Invisible Light, which of course is one of the best things you can say about a song.


Bonustrack: Mr. Brightside

I hope this fantastic cover of the hit by The Killers (when I heard the original being played in a store i London some week's ago, I actually for a split second thought: "Oh, somene has been covering Le Kid!" I really isn't that smart) is the first in a long row of fantastic covers by the group. Wouldn't it be great with a cover B-side for every single? Just think about what they could do with something by U2 from their Discotheque-era? Or with anything from the Alexander Bard-songbook? Or Kent! Please, do Kent! And so on. And so on. Amazing.