Review Summary: The curtain falls
It's been a long time since I've listened to the radio consistently, but when I was, Ou Est Le Swimming Pool were getting significant airplay. Their brand of unashamedly fun synthpop was a breath of fresh air compared to the rank stench of indie landfill that had been smothering the UK ever since Arctic Monkeys made every bunch of lads want to pick up guitars and put on their best regional accent. The lead single ‘Dance The Way I Feel’ was catchy and implored you to
dance, and not only that but to dance the way you
feel, to express yourself, an order so foreign to dour-faced music nerds it must have chilled them to the bone. Furthermore, the band was from camden, an area of london so incredibly hipsterish, trendy and cemented in the music scene that they were both destined for good things and the ire of NME guitar fetishists.
Sadly, this almost assured career success was cut short by frontman Charles Haddon’s untimely demise. Fearing he had seriously injured a girl in the crowd at the Pukklepop festival, and allegedly being threatened with a lawsuit by the girl’s father, he committed suicide in the backstage artists’ parking area. I normally don't go into personal details/background in reviews but I feel this case warrants it. Firstly, it explains why an up and coming band who had already found an audience from their debut ended up disbanding that same year. Secondly, it casts a strange shadow over the album; a once bright and hopeful record takes on a melancholic, sombre tone.
Well, not the whole record. ‘Dance The Way I Feel’ is still a sassy dance-pop number with a fierce undercurrent, bringing to mind a more mainstream early Crystal Castles. ‘The Key’ still hits all the right beats for a ‘you left’/we’re over’ love song with probably the best chorus on the album. But tracks such as ‘Curtain Falls’, with its lyrics about leaving to go your own way, wondering how things could have been different, feel darkly melancholic in a way that wasn't intended. Similarly, the chiptune-esque ‘Better’ feels like an ironic joke for all its hopefulness, as does the album title (
The Golden Year).
But is the album better or worse for this? I don't know. I also don't think it particularly matters. What does matter is that it's an interesting, often shaky and uneven LP that promised great things, and its a real shame what happened.
