By NOEL MURPHY
THE whole Brazil thing has a sensual groove and flair expected of somewhere like Rio, which features heavily in Alpine’s latest video.
But for all the mountains, beaches and aerial magic, the expected hip-thrashing samba moves are absent in Foolish, from the Australian pop band’s new album, Yuck. Not that it really matters because the video has a certain Sergio Mendes cool that calls for a slower version of lascivious.
Alpine’s frontwomen, Phoebe Baker and Lou James, give a fair showing of it, too. They’ve definitely gone jungle.
And in case it’s not obvious, a menagerie of crocodiles, leopards, elephants, flamingos – not to mention uniformed dictators, surface-to-air missiles and palm trees – underscore the point.
Lying back in a ritzy CGI pool somewhere around the Cristo Redemptor mountaintop statue high above Rio is probably a little different to the Barwon Club gig Alpine will play this month but, hey, as James pointed out, it’s all part of an uber-cool national Foolish tour.
“We’re beyond excited to be hitting the road again this June,” she said.
“We’ll have a glam-studded line-up with killer supports (that) will rock your socks off. This tour will be a pop-tastic dream with a drop of sass and we can’t wait to see you there.“
Guitarist and co-producer Christian O’Brien said musical inspiration for Yuck came from a desire to push the pop genre to new, often weird, places.
“Most of the music of the songs came from a textural or harmonic idea that I was curious about. I wanted to see if certain things would work in a pop song.”
The new album follows the Melbourne band’s debut A Is For Alpine, which peaked at number one on iTunes and 11 on the ARIA album charts. The release also won iTunes Alternative Australian Album of the Year.
The US release of A Is For Alpine had the band trekking back and forth across America, playing alongside the likes of Grouplove, Empire of the Sun and Crystal Fighters. A coveted spot on US TV’s Jimmy Kimmel Live was another highlight.
The title of the new album was drawn from band’s reactions to first-world problems, such as awkward dates, a distaste for romance, lust when it was lost, plastic vanity, foolish attraction and ego against egos.
As the lyrics of Foolish tell us:
“You brought too much, too much, metaphor to the relationship,
“To what I see, to how I kiss. Yuck.”
Fans shouldn’t expect any such distaste, other than the commentary, with the Barwon Club show, which is more likely to be, as Rolling Stone suggested, a “languid roll out in an endless temptation of silk sheets”.
