Lindstrøm & Christabelle
Real Life is No Cool
Rating: 4.0/5.0
Label: Smalltown Supersound
You know what? Real life really isn't that cool. Most of us live a life mired in routine; we wake up, go to a job that doesn't inspire us creatively or philosophically, make dead-end conversations with the people around us and then go to bed ready to face the same thing tomorrow. We reserve the stuff that truly galvanizes us, (like, say, freelance music journalism,) for the free time between our business responsibilities.
Lindstrøm has founded his entire career on that actuality and like his previous work, Real Life is No Cool is a world where sidewalk lights up like dancefloors, the '80s never ended and white blazers are still totally hip. Only his second collaboration with fellow Swede Christabelle, the album deflates all the stress and monotony of the daily grind into a scintillating, multi-colored disco ball - as if it's only purpose is to reassure you that everything is going to be alright.
Real Life is No Cool could've been another perfectly acceptable notch in Lindstrøm's already-prestigious career. The 10 productions are all incredibly taut, mesmerizingly sequenced and utterly danceable, just like anyone would've expected. He does throw few curveballs; specifically welcoming live instrumentation into his traditionally synthetics-only world, but for the most part, these tracks are known quantities, not that there's anything wrong with that.
Christabelle is the real star here; her slinky purrs and reticent half-sung whispers lay near the record's clement heart, and like her fellow Scandinavian songstress Annie, she's not afraid to shift her lyrical demeanor from a polished seductress to a helpless paramour - and sometimes somewhere in between. "Are you gonna be there/ Are you sure you're gonna call back," she murmurs on "Lovesick," underneath a frolicsome synth-stammer. She's both fed-up and fatally devoted to the opposite sex, especially when they leave clubs without her. That sort of questioning irresolution is something rarely attempted in the incredibly self-sure realm of dance music, but Christabelle is able to pull it off. She never sounds completely destitute, but her irritant, somewhat melancholy inflections resonate well, outside the limiting context of a club.
Of course that despondency doesn't last for long; Real Life is No Cool is wholeheartedly about unabashed good times. Songs like "So Much Fun" and "Baby Can't Stop" are simple toasts to the fairly elementary pleasures of a night on the town, the latter including the funkiest bassline this side of '78. Christabelle even commits herself, in all sincerity, to an extended, Barry White-style talk-down on the closer "Never Say Never." "Every time I discovered something new, something else/ I think I would get enough but no, I need more/ Because every touch you give, every smile I receive/ It's enough... you know all those little things," is shortly followed by a crooning, melodramatic guitar solo. Sure it's goofy, but in the best way possible.
Real Life is No Cool is an amazingly economic effort. Clocking in at a reasonable 47 minutes, the album knows exactly which synapses to hit. It's not as sprawling as II, or as hypnotizing as Where You Go I Go Too, but it probably has more fun than either of those records. It's an image of two of dance music's most inventive figures at their finest, and definitely merits a listen.
by Luke Winkie
