Review Summary: It's like your ears have gone sunbathing.
Swedes have always been a very determined people when it comes to summertime. The very appearance of the sun after a few long winter months is enough to send thousands of identically white-clad families to their park lawns and summer homes, with thousands of angry, peeling crab people returning hours later. They understand that it’s something to cherish though and that’s perhaps a trait that has tipped over into much of the nation's independent output over the past few years, with an evident focus on this sunny, optimistic theme. Air France’s
No Way Down is just one of the examples; carving out tropical from a land where you’re more likely to find the Holy Grail than a palm tree.
No Way Down gets by though, managing to be more sandy beaches and margaritas than pine cones and salmon, and playing out like the bastard love child of The Avalanches sampled papier-mâché masterpiece
Since I Left You and any big Balearic act the Spanish coast has churned out since the ‘80’s. “Collapsing At Your Doorstep” and “No Excuses” are disco romps that climb synths and strings right into the clouds (or wherever St. Ettiene lives; England is far less exotic), while tracks like “June Evenings” are perfectly happy in their warm melancholy. If anything, know that
No Way Down does its best to take you somewhere else and that in itself is one of its finest achievements, especially for any poor bastard stuck in a country where a peak of sunlight through the clouds is enough to warrant celebration.
