Issued in Scandinavia on Service (Jens Lekman, Studio), the Tough Alliance's early EPs introduced an electro-pop duo capable of covering both 50 Cent and C-86-era Primal Scream, replying to Daft Punk's "Teachers", recording could-be Top 40 singles, and spiking an optimistic love song with the words, "I don't give a flying fuck." TTA finally made inroads in the U.S. and Canada this summer when Montreal-based Summer Lovers Unlimited (Crystal Castles, Teenagers) reissued 2006's New Waves EP, which featured the shiny tropical wistfulness of "Silly Crimes". Soon the wonderful A New Chance-- which landed in Sweden this May via TTA's own Sincerely Yours imprint-- will join it, providing the best introduction yet to this singular group. (Summer Lovers also plans to issue the group's 2005 album, The New School.)
At barely more than half an hour, A New Chance may lack heft, but it's the purest expression so far of Sweden's ongoing pop hybridization. Lekman, who samples TTA on his stunning new Night Falls Over Kortedala, has called the Gothenburg duo his favorite Swedish band; they share the crooner's Jonathan Richman-oriented wonder and a willingness to plunder for inspiration. Through their Sincerely Yours label, they're connected to-- and have elements in common with-- Air France's island beatscapes, the aggressively tender stadium-twee of the Honeydrips, the Embassy's digital perfection, the Field's poignant nu-trance, and the yearning of former Concretes singer Victoria Bergsman (Taken by Trees).
Ex-Pitchfork staffer Pete Macia over at The Fader recently compared TTA to Public Image Ltd. if John Lydon had gone pop rather than parodying it, and he's right. But where Lydon went for dub and "Death Disco", Eric Berglund, who sings for TTA, and Henning Fürst, who handles the music, opt for beach-party sonics and fuck-you optimism. Opener "Something Special" assures us we're worthwhile, while single "First Class Riot" offers some decidedly un-rock'n'roll advice: "Don't you die yet." "Miami" matches bright acoustic strums to rave-era beats and the vocal hook to EQ's "Total Ecstasy". The dazzling title track imagines "a place where diamonds never fade away," but it has almost as many pitch-shifted vocal blips and wild-animal whoops as tingly keyboards, banana-boat bass lines, and spiky guitars.
Like fellow electro-pop provocateurs DAF or the KLF, TTA frequently test the bounds of what they can get away with. "We got our own jihad if you know what I mean," they once sang, although the muezzin-like cries that bookend the album are as political as they get here. Lip-synched live shows and a proclivity for swinging baseball bats on stage have caused some controversy at home, which the duo address directly on "Neo Violence": "Truly sorry, thought you'd get the wink."
On the Sincerely Yours website, Berglund and Fürst write about "something capable of transforming everyday existence into something strange and wonderful." Throughout A New Chance, the duo searches for an unspecified, elusive "something," that ranges from "something bright and pure" ("First Class Riot") to "That soul/ That can't be bought or sold" ("Looking for Gold") to "something that moves us tonight" ("The Last Dance"). Somewhere within pop's gaudy artifice-- Britney at the VMAs and "American Idol", sure, but also the contrived authenticity of so much folk and rock-- there remains, this music argues, the possibility for sincere expression. When the album ends, this may seem like just a dream: "Still in my bed, it's all in my head," Berglund concludes on "1981 -".
