I am unable to say that anarchic contrarians The Tough Alliance gave the best performance I saw at this year’s SXSW music festival back in March. But that may be because what the Swedish duo did, on a tiny stage at Austin nightclub Karma, didn’t actually qualify as a performance at all, at least of the musical variety.
As smoke machines billowed and strobe lights flashed, Henning Fürst and Eric Berglund, the two gentleman behind The Tough Alliance, simply blared studio recordings of their dance-y synth-pop from the club’s PA and kinetically roamed the stage.
You couldn’t even call what they did lip-synching, as ultimately that term is meant to indicate an attempt at deception, and the hijinx-prone TTA (as they are lovingly shorthanded back home in their home base of Gothenburg) barely raised their microphones to their mouths, preferring instead to violently swing the mic stand in the air or roll their eyes into the backs of their heads as if in rapture and gyrate their svelte torsos as beach images and slow motion dolphins were projected behind them. The small audience, myself included, pumped their fists and sang along.
The sing along was interesting not only because the crowd was making much more effort than the band to perform—the cuts blaring from the sound system were fully intact, without even having the lead vocals stripped away—but because the bulk of the material heard wasn’t even commercially available in the United States at the time.
That all changes this week, however, as TTA’s two full-length LPs, 2005’s The New School and 2007’s A New Chance, see stateside release from two different labels: Summer Lovers Unlimited for the former (the group’s debut LP) and Modular for the latter, its latest album.
Pop, in its origins, is shorthand for “popular,” meant to communicate a degree of mainstream accessibility; and while The Tough Alliance are undeniably pop by any sonic definition, the synth whooshes and pulsating backbeats that prop up their soaring melodies do not come pre-assembled (insert your Ikea joke here).
The New School’s “In The Kitchen” is completely synthesizer derived, with keyboard-generated approximations of pianos and trumpets cooked into a thumping head-nodder that somehow renders the cheesiest of elements into gourmet listening. A New Chance’s “Looking For Gold” is a relative oddity among that release’s eight cuts, but it is an incredibly convincing, whistle-along pass at reggae as rendered on a pawnshop Casio.
Lyrically, The Tough Alliance cements its status as a forward-thinking band: Its pop anthems are never overtly about romantic love (and perhaps aren’t at all), but would you expect a song called “First Class Riot,” whose titular phrase is rhymed with “don’t you die yet!” to kick off one of 2007’s most anthemic choruses?
The New School’s “Koka-Kola Veins” has TTA singing “we don’t use our brains” over a snappy disco bass line, capping off the refrain that is anti-drug or anti-commercial or something (but who cares when it’s so damn catchy?) with the actual lyrics “blah blah blah/ blah blah blah blah blah” rounding out the refrain.
Over the top of it all are gorgeous melodies that build slowly, sung in voices only classifiable as pop because of their body-moving surroundings. The singing on TTA records is unintuitive, a high-pitched whine that tends to sound oddly genderless (which reminds me: TTA songs are never about sex) and often features reverb that’s distant, gloriously filtered or phased.
The Tough Alliance pull their best vocal trick on their 2006 New Waves EP, which has been available in the States for a while; but, even though it’s only four songs long, it’s a necessary mention as arguably their greatest achievement.
The aforementioned bit of brilliance isn’t so much in the way it’s sung as in the way it’s recorded. The shiny, five-and-a-half-minute “25 Years and Runnin’,” which is, as many TTA jams seem to be, a dance-club meditation on escape, has the vocal track suddenly cut in and out, as though the cord were shorting out, as one of them (I have no idea which one sings, or if they both do, but it doesn’t concern me) croons: “If I could only change where I came from,” the effect chopping the words to pieces.
As smoke machines billowed and strobe lights flashed, Henning Fürst and Eric Berglund, the two gentleman behind The Tough Alliance, simply blared studio recordings of their dance-y synth-pop from the club’s PA and kinetically roamed the stage.
You couldn’t even call what they did lip-synching, as ultimately that term is meant to indicate an attempt at deception, and the hijinx-prone TTA (as they are lovingly shorthanded back home in their home base of Gothenburg) barely raised their microphones to their mouths, preferring instead to violently swing the mic stand in the air or roll their eyes into the backs of their heads as if in rapture and gyrate their svelte torsos as beach images and slow motion dolphins were projected behind them. The small audience, myself included, pumped their fists and sang along.
The sing along was interesting not only because the crowd was making much more effort than the band to perform—the cuts blaring from the sound system were fully intact, without even having the lead vocals stripped away—but because the bulk of the material heard wasn’t even commercially available in the United States at the time.
That all changes this week, however, as TTA’s two full-length LPs, 2005’s The New School and 2007’s A New Chance, see stateside release from two different labels: Summer Lovers Unlimited for the former (the group’s debut LP) and Modular for the latter, its latest album.
Pop, in its origins, is shorthand for “popular,” meant to communicate a degree of mainstream accessibility; and while The Tough Alliance are undeniably pop by any sonic definition, the synth whooshes and pulsating backbeats that prop up their soaring melodies do not come pre-assembled (insert your Ikea joke here).
The New School’s “In The Kitchen” is completely synthesizer derived, with keyboard-generated approximations of pianos and trumpets cooked into a thumping head-nodder that somehow renders the cheesiest of elements into gourmet listening. A New Chance’s “Looking For Gold” is a relative oddity among that release’s eight cuts, but it is an incredibly convincing, whistle-along pass at reggae as rendered on a pawnshop Casio.
Lyrically, The Tough Alliance cements its status as a forward-thinking band: Its pop anthems are never overtly about romantic love (and perhaps aren’t at all), but would you expect a song called “First Class Riot,” whose titular phrase is rhymed with “don’t you die yet!” to kick off one of 2007’s most anthemic choruses?
The New School’s “Koka-Kola Veins” has TTA singing “we don’t use our brains” over a snappy disco bass line, capping off the refrain that is anti-drug or anti-commercial or something (but who cares when it’s so damn catchy?) with the actual lyrics “blah blah blah/ blah blah blah blah blah” rounding out the refrain.
Over the top of it all are gorgeous melodies that build slowly, sung in voices only classifiable as pop because of their body-moving surroundings. The singing on TTA records is unintuitive, a high-pitched whine that tends to sound oddly genderless (which reminds me: TTA songs are never about sex) and often features reverb that’s distant, gloriously filtered or phased.
The Tough Alliance pull their best vocal trick on their 2006 New Waves EP, which has been available in the States for a while; but, even though it’s only four songs long, it’s a necessary mention as arguably their greatest achievement.
The aforementioned bit of brilliance isn’t so much in the way it’s sung as in the way it’s recorded. The shiny, five-and-a-half-minute “25 Years and Runnin’,” which is, as many TTA jams seem to be, a dance-club meditation on escape, has the vocal track suddenly cut in and out, as though the cord were shorting out, as one of them (I have no idea which one sings, or if they both do, but it doesn’t concern me) croons: “If I could only change where I came from,” the effect chopping the words to pieces.
