In 2015, Daphne & Celeste—the bubblegum-pop duo behind such Y2K-era schoolyard hits as “Ooh Stick You!” and “U.G.L.Y.”—released their first piece of music in more than a decade: an uncharacteristically low-key song called “You & I Alone.” It was a comeback that came completely out of left field. Though technically American in origin, Daphne & Celeste were part of a long-forgotten Europop wave known primarily for its extreme cheesiness. Even at the time, they were almost comically reviled by the UK press and many listeners, to the point that they were forced off stage by bottle-hurling fans during what was supposed to be a harmless novelty slot at the Reading Festival. Soon after that incident, Daphne & Celeste were dropped by their label, with just one album, 2000’s We Didn’t Say That!, to their name. Their music was a candy commercial, way too sugary and primarily aimed at children, and the high didn’t last long.
The biggest surprise about their new single, then, was that it actually wasn’t bad. This was bewildering to anyone who remembered, with varying degrees of fondness, Daphne & Celeste’s initial run. Built around an effervescent bassline and a simple, bleating keyboard part, “You & I Alone” stripped away the over-the-top theatrics that launched their careers, instead offering a dreamily subdued love song.
The upgraded sound came from the cult-favorite British synth auteur Ben Jacobs, a.k.a. Max Tundra, who knows a thing or two about long sabbaticals (his last full-length, Parallax Error Beheads You, came out in 2008). Three years after “You & I Alone,” he has returned to write, produce, and release Daphne & Celeste’s second-ever LP, the fun, ambitious, and sometimes downright bizarre Daphne & Celeste Save the World. Tundra hasn’t lost any of the innovative flair and technical prowess that made his previous records touchstones in the 2000s electronic scene, and on Save the World he manages to compress a dazzling range of pop genres into 13 tracks—from electro-pop to dream-pop to J-pop to the sort of ultra-commercial, high gloss Top 40 pop that made Daphne & Celeste famous in the first place.
The track that connects most clearly to the dubiously jocular days of We Didn’t Say That! is the single “BB,” which, it is revealed, stands for “Basic Busker.” Opening with a spoken-word segment where Daphne & Celeste bemoan the popularity of a terrible folk song—”This is the first thing you figure out when you get a guitar!” “Do people dig this?”—the track is an effective jab at the likes of Ed Sheeran, though his name is never mentioned. “Sonic simplicity is considerably over-represented/And sub-Dylan balladry was OK before the Fairlight was invented,” Daphne & Celeste sing at the song’s coda, taking a very funny (and unexpectedly highbrow) shot at the artists who have replaced them as maligned chart-toppers. Here as elsewhere, their upbeat sing-talk style rises to the challenge of Tundra’s technically dense production.
Mostly, though, Tundra reins in the duo’s silliness. “Alarms”, for example, seems more interested in deconstructing mainstream pop than in mocking it. The song, which recalls Saint Etienne’s recent output, begins as mid-tempo, spaced-out electro-pop, with Daphne & Celeste’s vocals run through layers of vocoders and supported by lush synths, before subtly shifting into a proper dancefloor banger with a disco backbeat and staccato strings. “A.L.T.O.” makes prominent use of steel drums, a tropical pop trope that has become all but synonymous with unimaginative club tracks over the past decade—but here it sounds like a deliberate choice to repurpose that cliché into something organic and alive.
Saves the World is full of clever production decisions like this, which are what make the project worthwhile. By working with Daphne & Celeste’s notoriety and, it turns out, actual charm, Tundra is able to project his idea of what pop should sound like in 2018 onto an essentially blank slate. Instead of a tired pastiche, the three musicians have created one of the most weirdly compelling pop collaborations in recent memory.
