Todd Terje
It’s Album Time! (Smalltown Supersound)
18/20
And so, at last, it’s album time for Todd Terje. This is Terje Olsen’s (the pseudonym is a punning tribute to Todd Terry) first ‘proper’ full-length in a career that stretches back to 2005’s Eurodans. It follows the massive success – or grating ubiquity – of Ragysh/Snooze 4 Love and Inspector Norse. “Victim of their own success”; something someone with a silly beard has probably said about Terje. Inspector Norse, unfortunately for some, was everywhere. This meant the snarkier among us – me, for example – said it sounded like it was made by The Teletubbies, to cast, by contrast, our own musical preferences in a cooler, more esoteric light. Such was the quality of the song-writing, structure, and sheer sense of fun, however, that even in my over-wrought, slightly mean joke did I say that Terje was responsible for putting fun back on the dance floor. But can he do it for the dance music album? And is Terje the instigator of ‘the joke’ here? Part of it? Or worse – the butt of it?
The opener starts informatively and sweetly enough, with faded-in bleeps and vintage Linn sounds making way for a breathy refrain saying “it’s album time”. The melodies all ‘make sense’ here; nothing’s too discordant or out-of-place; campery abounds. But then Leisure Suit Preben and Preben Goes to Acapulco arrive, a neat pair of fairly complex, samba-y mood lifters, the latter boasting an enormous Van Halen-esque keyboard solo midway. The tempo really picks up with Svensk Saas, a layered, progressive continuation of the samba theme replete with 808/909 clicks and pulses. Strandbar, Terje’s self-aware nod to his own growing popularity at festivals-cum-beach holidays, straddles the halfway point with Delorean Dynamite, a chugging, cosmic-italo thumper for graduates of the Justice school of ‘electro’. An 80s tom-tom roll rounds out the mid-peak, leaving Bryan Ferry’s vocals on Robert Palmer cover John and Mary to soothe. Ferry’s voice is fairly fragile now, adding a dignified melancholy to Terje’s (occasionally) subtle and superb 80s-sounding production. There’s not much time to recover, though – Alfonso Muskedunder reboots the tempo and we’re back with some urgency. This, I feel, is the album’s weakest section – it’s some kind of knowing pastiche of a pastiche, much like Terje’s own pastiche of his own Eurodans under his own ‘New Mjøndalen Disco Swingers’ alias; this is the kind of cyclical irony that can frustrate at times. The two halves of Swing Star make for more contemplative synth work, the former part like something on Italians Do It Better without the mannered insouciance, the latter a bit funkier, like a less shouty, more Norwegian Devo. Then Oh Joy, another enormous build-and-release Terje special in the Inspector Norse mould – Mr Flaggio style bass, tense but ultimately satisfying cadences – before said Inspector lays down his familiar, but still formidable, track to close.
This slab of witty, good-natured, disco-indebted fun will lift your mood, prep you for summer and restore your faith in declarative album titles. The Hives may have tricked you with 2004’s Your New Favourite Band, but don’t worry – like Flight of the Conchords before him, Terje knows exactly what time it is, and unlike Chico, the time is his.
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Words: Robert Bates
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