Turboweekend
Ghost of a chance
Mermaid Records/Sony/BMG
Perhaps this is the sound Weeping Willows were going for when they switched gears to make "Into the light": dark, modern disco with a touch of the sublime. The difference is however, Turboweekend is a trio so their sound is far more pared down, sleek and sexy. It also has the clinical deliberateness of Talk Talk or Peter Gabriel; clean, concise and expertly arranged. Like a complicated recipe where you can still taste every spice, every instrument retains its own separate space, but is perfectly balanced against each other to raise the whole. Even better, the lyrical content is informed by much more than standard-grade Scandinavian romantic melancholy. Yes, there's plenty of love and loss, but songs like "Holiday" for instance give working for a weekend an apocalyptic dimension and others such as "Sweet Jezebel" and "Up with the smoke - Down with the ash" touch on the supernatural. The mood is consistently somber and fully engaged; not something I normally expect from an act that could be mistakenly construed to be "merely" dancefloor fodder. Whether heard on headphones or in the club, the experience is just as good.
- Avi Roig
