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Features Disc of the day
Tahiti 80
Wallpaper For The Soul
(Atmospheriques, 2003)
Defeat sodden streets and winter gloom with a great summer record.
Kites; the voice of John Arlott; an Ernie Isley guitar solo: Paris-based quartet Tahiti 8 join a select collection of stimuli clinically proven to bring on an instant summer rush. Maybe it’s their sound: suede-soft and just slightly synthetic, with debts to ecstasy-nibbled Gallic house and super-sophisticated guitar pop from The Zombies to Cardigans. Maybe it’s the chords: jazz-tinged, instantly “French” in that way briefly championed by ‘80s hipsters including Terry Hall (on The Colourfield’s lovely Virgins & Philistines LP), Ben Watt and The Style Council.
In a comfortingly familiar way, Tahiti 80’s second album matched the best bits of their 2001 debut, Puzzle. Once again, Anglophone vocalist Xavier Boyer writes earnest but sings nonchalant, pitching somewhere between Colin Blunstone and Eric Matthews (once again, Matthews himself provides trumpets and backups). And as before, it’s glorious entente of old and new technology, with big brass and sad-disco strings (courtesy Richard Hewson – of James Taylor’s first album and Let It Be) cavorting amid the bubbles and sniiiit!s of computery percussion while Médéric Gontier’s guitars needle groovily away, as if sewing a smiley face patch on pair of worn flares. Somehow there is a surfeit of hummable, up-tempo, depression-nuking pop (1,000 Times, The Other Side, Separate Ways and Get Yourself Together could all conceivably soundtrack ads for sanitary products) that doesn’t make you want to vomit.
Meanwhile, under the surface frolics there’s a constant, low background hum of melancholy, reinforcing the impression of Tahiti 80 as a kind of pop culture coelacanth – an él band somehow beached in the early 21st Century, afforded a state-of-the-art production makeover but with no obvious place (apart from Japan of course) to call home. Vive le pop, we say.
Danny Eccleston
Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 13/01/2009
Further Listening
Eric Matthews – The Lateness Of The Hour (Sub Pop, 1997)
Tahiti 80 – Puzzle (Atmospheriques, 2001)
The Colourfield – Virgins & Philistines (Chrysalis, 1985)
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Causa Sui - Summer Sessions Vol 1-3
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