Galore - Dragonette > Reviews > Dragonette - Galore (witty, huh?)

Three quarters Canadian, one quarter British seems to be the perfect mix, well, a better mix than Coca Cola and orange anyway, which isn’t a difficult thing really all things considered, I mean, well done on your successful pairings with vanilla, citrus zest, cherry and lemon, but orange? Anyway, time to backtrack, get off this tangent and back on to the never ending circle of Pop (short for Popular, remember that, won’t you?). Dragonette are here, they have been for a while actually, but it’s only recently that they’ve started to get their selves noticed by the great unwashed, and if you’ll give me a moment of your time, I’ll take you on the quick tour.

The father of lead singer, Martina Sorbrara seems to think his daughter could do better than to be part of a ‘market driven’ electropop outfit that look as if they have stepped out of a yachting era Duran Duran video, but what would he know, he’s only a finance minister? Anyway, Dragonette’s first gig was supporting Duran Duran (we’ll have no jokes about Zimmer frames thank you) when they toured the States (man!). In fairness, there’s a lot of good on this album, like the adultery encouraging ‘Competition’, the ‘tart-with-a-heart’ frippery of first single, ‘I Get Around’ ( I say yes, when I oughta say no) and the low down dirtiness of ‘Black Limousine’, but, as with everything in life, when one side of the wheel is going up, the other is coming down…

Although Dragonette are picking up a fine old following, it’s sometimes easy to get cheesed off with the perfectly polished production masquerading as lo-fi edginess, which is going to see pop-tarts and indie-kids alike trying to plant their flag firmly in the soft brown earth of ‘Galore’, and as we all know, pop and indie are two entirely separate things. Still, they’ve done themselves 97.4% proud, and in today’s world, that can’t really be classed as a bad thing, can it?

Hurrah! And again, hurrah! An album that would surely be classed as this summer’s soundtrack were it not for Chungking, but never mind, Dragonette are more approachable and accessible in my opinion (the only one that counts, really). If you can forgive the occasional forays into pretension and the odd misfiring cylinder, then you’ll have no problem absorbing the jokey sneer Martina and the boys are throwing over their collective shoulder at you. There’s a lot worse out there (Arctic Monkeys for instance, who are swindling their way into peoples hearts), and not an awful lot that are better, so if I were you, I’d put in a few extra shifts at the mill, take the resulting wad of lucre and throw it at some lanky, long-haired assistant at your favourite aural emporium in exchange for a shiny disc of pleasure, failing that, snaffle it off iTunes, you won’t be sorry…