The Tough Alliance - 'A New Chance' (Modular) Released 13/10/08

To clutch at straws, we could mention that The Tough Alliance are not as languorously dark and difficult as The Knife and The Field in their sub-half hour, enigma free pop album; but not as PG musical blockbuster worthy as ABBA.  Why do we mention this? Because they’re all Swedish.   Why does this matter?  Oh yeah, it doesn’t.  This album is not one offering straws to be clutched at, and certainly not one to reduce to lazy comparisons based on nationality.

The record opens with ‘Eye of the Tiger’-esque fervour, before retracting behind the unabashed, glorious camp that shamelessly struts over each track.  Paul Simons style eighties piano leads the tarted up choruses, until ‘Miami’ leaps in glowsticks blazing like a gurning gun-shot of from the early nineties. ‘First Class Riot’ – once you get past the perhaps unspeakable semblance of the Busted-like  happy-go-lucky pheromones – is a joyful slice of summer whimsy.  Lovingly framed like a sepia snap of a carefree summer day, this is a glorious slice of synth-pop – not to mention a still from a boutique-cider advertising exec’s wet dream. 

However, the cheesy reggae of ‘Looking for Gold’ is a let down: seemingly they got bored of searching for the end of the rainbow and were content to lies with the fools’ stuff instead.  It seems an unnecessary venture the TTA’s prospecting for the eclectic: they effortlessly achieve a vitality and versatility over a record swooning with shimmering electronica, unabashed pop decadence and subtle dance complexity.

The cheeky irony of titles like ‘First Class Riot’ and ‘Neo Violence’ pinpoint the band’s nonchalant play-wrestle between optimism, self-awareness and the dangers of a blinkered devotion to the Bible of Pop that they take as a sacred starting point.  They achieve a vitality lost among bands hoping to simply wipe the dust off their parent’s EPs and pass them off as a loosely taped over new creation – The Tough Alliance wipe the vinyl and gleefully mould their influences into a  new shape and colour. 

This record is like sonic liberation from eighties and early nineties guilty pleasures: stridently waving its big, camp hands over at Kajagoogoo and Bronski Beat whilst still maintaining a freshness and vigour that stamps itself coyly into the noughties and out of the shackles of nostalgia.  Guilty?  As charged, officer.