Album Review by Adam Foster
There’s been a reasonable amount of hype about Tahiti 80. Ludicrously, Zoe Ball recently described their previous single YELLOW BUTTERFLY, taken from their previous album, PUZZLE, as “possibly the loveliest summer song ever”.
The fact is that Tahiti 80 combine everything chillingly bad about pop music. They produce apparently “feel good” music which is synthetic beyond belief; they have a singer with a pretty, synthetic voice who could not carry an emotion if under pain of death; and they are just so bland and – yes – synthetic that there is no surprise that they have called their new album WALLPAPER FOR THE SOUL without any apparent trace of irony.
Musically, it is a sort of Euro-pap soul-lite with plenty of brass and synthesised snares. Superficially, it reminds you of WAKE UP BOO by the Boo Radleys, or Dexys’s GENO without the spirit. So utterly upbeat are they, they make the Polyphonic Spree sound like The Smiths. But it is Euro-Soul: soul with no soul.
And when you listen to the lyrics, this lack of soul is confirmed. The songs are humour-free, self-centred, self-righteous, objectionable, and written by someone with an unfailing superiority complex. The unintentional irony of the album – and certainly the key to its unattractiveness – is that while the music attempts a summer’s evening feel, its lyrics betray a self-regarding life with no shred of joy. On SEPARATE WAYS, the least charismatic singer in the world sings:
So why is it so hard for you to tell?
You’d make my life easier…
Will you offer what I’m after?
Hope you’ll do it someday
So we’ll never go our separate ways…
On your bike, Romeo. The next track is called GET YOURSELF TOGETHER (the clue’s in the title), which is followed by HAPPY END:
I’m not sure I’m the one you want to please,
I think it’s you, I guess you know it too.
Do you really want to change things,
Improve them?
Sometimes I feel you just do the opposite.
Nothing in Tahiti 80’s world is their own fault. And all this egotistical, self-serving pap is sung in a pious, aggravating tone – thanks to the persistent ‘30’s mike’ filter – by someone who is not the Pope, but nonetheless thinks they are infallible. And the album is full of such horrors. Utterly infuriating.
In short, WALLPAPER FOR THE SOUL fails in its mission to be bland because it is just so damned irritating. Like a born-again Christian doing a good deed, this record is so smug and self-satisfied you want to kick its teeth in.
I never want to hear this again. Ever.
