the tough alliance

So I'm going to be lazy tonight and tell you about how much I love The Tough Alliance. Bloody Gothenburg can do no wrong at the moment, it seems. I listened to last year's A New Chance album in the car on the way home tonight and, oh boy, if I had listened to it last year, it would have ranked as one of the best albums of '07. It channels everything - middle eastern chants at the beginning of "Something Special", to Big Audio Dynamite-stylee early 90s keys and synths and those bloody bongo beats that make me want to find some cheesy beach nightclub with a silly cocktail in hand to dance the night away. It could be so easy to write it all off as just another dance album, but these guys wear their influences proud, and they're good influences too.

One of my favourite TA songs is "Take No Heroes", off 1995's The New School, because it has this amazing synth line, along with the coolest chanting lyrics that mention Snoop Dogg and Jim & William Reid amongst others. Fellow Gothenburg dreamboat Jens Lekman also sampled it on "I'm Leaving You Because I Don't Love You". They have also done a cover of Primal Scream's "Velocity Girl" and called it "Velocity Boy", and it's just such an innovative cover. Hell yeah!

Clearly they enjoy messing with the system, which I like. Their website is full of pictures of a tennis player (don't ask me which one - Sharapova, maybe? I only watched the men's final of the recent Australian Open), and links to the Sincerely Yours page, which greets you with some fine, fine classical. Better than your average bio, eh?

Best of all, TTA are playing here at the end of March, at the V Festival. If the lure of The Jesus & Mary Chain wasn't enough, you get to experience this live. Now, if only the Smashing Pumpkins had cancelled instead of Mika - it would have been a dance party to remember!