New Popsession: Le Kid - Oh Alright

Pop bands are are rare thing.
Sure, there’s plenty of manufactured pop groups, and there’s quite a few bands who make radio friendly music, but when it comes to actual bands who have all the catchiness, fun, dance moves and bright videos of a pop group ánd write and play all their own music, the closest thing we can think of are The Pipettes, Alphabeat and Dragonette. They’re brilliant, but Le Kid easily ‘outpops’ all of them.
We’re usually not the kind of music snobs who care that much about whether an artist does or doesn’t write their own material, but when the songs are as good as the ones on this album, it sure raises our admiration.

We first found out about Le Kid in the summer of 2009 when they unleashed their debut single Mercy Mercy. A song that sounded more than a bit inspired by Girls Aloud’s Can’t Speak French, but the cheerleading breakdown and ’50s video had enough of an own personality to justify it’s existence. Plus as far as inspirations go, you could do a lot worse than the almighty Aloud. A cute literal version of the video made us warm to them even more, but we weren’t completely in love just yet, because through the years we got pretty used to Swedish artists bringing us above average pop songs.

September 2010.
The band put out their second song and video, and we were sold.
Between wet sailors, male mermaids, dancers in safety vests, and a song that sounded like someone put all the greatest pop songs of the ’80s & ’90s (plus A-ha’s Take On Me) in a blender to create the most delicious smoothie ever, We Should Go Home Together instantly became one of our favourite songs of all times.

In the following months a euphoric Mr. Brightside cover, a Eurovision entry that had just the right amount of cheese, and the surprisingly mellow/melancholic 4th single America followed in their sly campaign to become our number one pop act. And although it might have taken the break(up)s of two girl groups, they succeeded.
Le Kid are officially the most exciting thing in pop at the moment, and their debut album was our most anticipated one of this year.

Unfortunately, nine times out of ten anticipation is a synonym for dissapointment. Especially when you’re pretty much expecting the greatest album ever made. Yet, and we’re still not quite sure hów they did it, the band once again delivered. Big time.

Oh Alright! is a perfect pop album. Where other new albums often have that one or two great songs you keep going back to, this one has eleven of them, together making for 40 minutes of us nonstop going ‘gosh, I love this song’.

Considering all of them got written by the same people the album is surprisingly diverse, despite it’s consistency not repeating itself one time. There’s fun feisty uptempo pop anthems like We Should Go Home Together, Oh My God and Mr. Brightside, there’s the more midtempo upbeat songs like Mercy Mercy, Kiss Me (which sounds like something that could have been on the Scissor Sisters’ second album), and Destroy Everything You Touch sounding new single We Are The Drums, and then there’s the more melancholic electroballads like America, Escape and what hás to be the next single if there’ll be more from this album: Bigger Than Jesus. Overall it’s an undeniably happy and upbeat pop album though, and even the saddest songs on here should give you a smile. On every single song the production and vocals are spot on, as are the lyrics, especially on the quirkier songs, like on Seventeen where the girls try to woe a guy with the line ‘I can be cute, I can be dumb, and I’m not even illegally young’.
In short: if you like this kind of pop, you can’t go wrong with this album.

One of the band’s biggest virtues is perhaps that they’re not trying to be something they’re not. Lots of groups who make fun catchy pop music ruin it by their need to prove they’re cool, edgy and sexy, or by overdoing their cheesiness and becoming like a bad parody of a pop group.
Le Kid áre fun, cheesy, cool, sexy and at times even a little edgy, but most of all they’re five people who’ve shown they gét pop music. And those make for the best popstars.

Le Kid Official Site
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Oh Alright! comes out on September 7