Album of the month :
September 2002
SISTER SONNY (N) :
" The Bandit Lab "
( Rec 90)
If you can't stand the rain, never go to Bergen, the only place on earth where you can find automatic umbrella dispensers at every street corner. But bad weather has positive points too: people stay indoors, get bored, form bands, and this has resulted in the most exciting pop scene to emerge from Norway in the last few years. Artists like The Kings Of Convenience, Ephemera, Sondre Lerche, Ai Phoenix, Emmerhoff or Lano Places are living proofs of that. Not forgetting, of course, Sister Sonny.
The fourth output from this quintet led by singer/composer/poet Pedro Carmona-Alvarez, " The Bandit Lab" is their most ambitious and accomplished release to date. Moving away from the slow melancholic pop of the previous album, it is the work of people in motion, not afraid to widen their horizon nor to tackle musical styles they've never used before. This stunning metamorphosis brings to mind what happened to Motorpsycho with " Let Them Eat Cake", To Fireside with " Elite", and most of all, to The Notwist, whose sensitive mix of electric and electronic sounds on " Shrink" and " Neon Golden" is now echoed in Sister Sonny's luxuriant soundscape.
The haunting melody and 3-D sound spectrum of Rumba Parumba open the set with wistful elegance. Merging into the addictive theremin tune of Sonnyology, it is only the prelude to a spectacular diversity of songs, ingeniously put together to form this amazingly cohesive set. The range of styles is impressive. It goes from the jazz-tinged richness of Nothing Amuses The People As A Puppet ( Think of Jaga Jazzist with words) to the fiery rhythms and lengthy freakish coda of Stupid And The Silver Fox ( Motorpsycho before the slough ?) through the ultra-catchy Leonard In Drag ( Single, please!). Both so-so Educating Jimmy and better Japan-like Burning Teddy are reminders that, prior to this album, Sister Sonny released an EP of early-8O's synth-pop pastiches. But the band's best moments are elsewhere. On the feathery Schlafen Zie ? for instance, with its bewetching atmosphere and fluttering guitar licks. Or on the swell guitar tune of Cameron, enhanced with cascading harps and sparkling electronics. Often praised in the music-press, the cinematic quality of Sister Sonny's music has never been more effective than on these new songs. Thank You, Robert brings up images of ghosts waltzing slow-motion in the Blackpool dance-hall , Neon Party walks you in a sort of fancied Montmartre revisited by David Lynch, while the elusive Superpurple sounds like a dolphin-guided trip to the ruins of Atlantis.
Clocking at an impressive 70 minutes ( " A 2-record set on one compact-disc", it says on the cover), " The Bandit Lab" palls a bit by the end. But there are fifty minutes of pure excellence anyway, and this is more than enough to ensure it a place at the top of this year's final polls. Vote now !
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