Review Summary: An strong release from a highly original electro-clash band.
Take a minute and get a good feel for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs musical style, then add electro-clash flair and you have Alice in Videoland, a Swedish band with a large underground following. The band first formed in 2002 by singer Toril Lindqvist, who describes herself as “a bitchy disco punk female singer”, with the release of various demos the Alice in Videoland cult formed rapidly, many fans expressed interest in the band because of their unique quality compared to other underground bands of the time. As the years progressed the band was eventually signed and two albums (Maiden Voyage, Outrageous!) plus a rereleased version of the debut album. In 2008, the most recent album She’s A Machine was released and it blew their fan base away. In a good way. The record was much more polished and better flowing then the previous releases, and contains some of the best songs the band has created thus far in their career.
The opening track, also the first single and title track
She’s A Machine is the perfect song for wanting to know what this band is about. A loud electro anthem that repeats the verse and chorus throughout the first half of the song, until it explodes into the lines “rip your heart out, chew it up spit it out!” It is everything that any electro-clash band would want to create, and a perfect opener and introduction to the band in general. Following a similar style to the previous song, is
MF, a rebellious song, although generic, “no one ***ing messes with me” it still has its own sense of uniqueness.
One of the strongest parts of this album is how every song has its own life; each could easily stand on its own. The lyrics are not anything special, but that is not the focus of the band. The focus is how everything sounds when the vocals are put together with the electronic aspect.
Following the excellent track
Numb, is
Whose That Boy and
Candy. These are the only two tracks where the album falters’, by no means are they bad tracks, but they cannot compare to the others, and when you have an album with only eight tracks, you cannot have room for this.
Whose That Boy is just a generic track about seeing someone from across the room, and asking “who’s that?” Even the beat isn’t as original as the other tracks, and it’s noticeably the weakest song on the album.
Candy is rather similar to this, but more “dreamy” and takes the “clash” part out of their genera “electro-clash”. Not a good move on their part.
The album switches back to the sound from the first part of the album with
Weird Desire , if this band was mainstream this would be a hit track without a doubt. It is similar to
MF , but with a disco aspect added, it’s a sexy club driven song, and one of the strongest on the album.
Tomorrow is the perfect song to follow
Weird Desire because it’s about the morning after a party. A classic waking up in Vegas story.
If you have heard anything from past Alice in Videoland albums, it will become obvious that She’s A Machine is their strongest release to date, and has the potential to push them into the mainstream. Although most underground fans are hoping that this doesn’t happen, it’s nice these days to have a band to go to when you want to get away from some of the awful music being released these days, and for many Alice in Videoland is that band. To those people the album She’s a Machine is a big “F-you” to the mainstream audience.
