Album Review by EDF
When a band describe themselves as punkish, I usually run to the hills. Luckily Surferosa, a Norwegian synth-punk band, give out an energy and attitude that would have sat nicely with those spiky haired punks from the late 1970’s. The band toured with Electric 6 a little while back where Mariann, the lead singer found herself with requests to autograph her fans bits and we are talking both male and female organs.
The album starts with a yelp on the opening LUCKY LIPSTICK, which sounds a little bit like that Republica hit from a few years ago, READY TO GO. This is not an attempt to scare you off as they obviously have an idea about how to make their punkish songs sound like pop songs as well. Mariann gives her all on SATIN CON BLONDE and GERMAN SOCKS, where even the guitars come to the forefront.
They even play around with different sounds on the oriental sounding CHINESE MOON, where Mariann gives you the sort of vocal performance that would knock you out of your Doc Martins. UNIT sounds a little like Blondie although there are a number of tracks that you could try to connect this to. Both BIM BAM BOOM and NEON COMMANDO sounds like a throwback to the ‘80’s with their synth sounds. The opening riff to SATURDAY NIGHT sounds like an accompaniment to Electric 6’s GAY BAR.
The album has some good ideas and going by the reports of their live gigs, they sound like they are a lot better than this album would suggest. As we all know, if you cannot prove yourself live, than you are going to run out of ideas very quickly. Going by this, Surferosa can only improve on this debut album.
