Cool World

If the Swedes, the Danes and the Norwegians have been pegged as cool, aloof and cerebral, no one bothered to tell Christabelle Sandoo. 

 

As half of the electro duo Lindstrøm & Christabelle, she’s a good-time girl on the prowl. A glance at song titles on their debut Real Life Is No Cool (dig that broken English) confirms Christabelle’s perpetual state of arousal:  "Keep It Up," "Let’s Practice," "Baby Can’t Stop." Producer/remixer Hans-Peter Lindstrøm steeps his 21st century disco in old-school, Giorgio Moroder synths — icy and evocative — with a post-modern gloss that belies Christabelle’s whispery pleas. On the roiling mid-tempo "Lovesick," her half-sung/half-spoken vocals create an ambiguous frisson between desire and actual illness. And first single "Baby Can’t Stop" drops a bomb on The Gap Band’s bubbly, bass-heavy groove-moves, with a dollop of modern pop straight from Oslo. 

 

Every now and then, the duo get weirdly experimental, as on the rambling ambient opener "Looking for What." But when they’re on fire they never miss a chance to burn up both those Scandinavian stereotypes and the dance floor.

 

 

Real Life Is No Cool is available now from Smalltown Supersound.