French trio PORTLAND released their latest single and music video “Before You” this morning.
“Before You” visually and auditorially exists on the cusp of two worlds – 70s disco and 80s electropop, dawn and dusk, land and ocean, love and heartbreak.
Tag: ’80s
“Pendulum” by Pure Bathing Culture
Pure Bathing Culture‘s “Pendulum” is the perfect mash-up of nu gaze, dream pop, and 1980s Everything But the Girl / Tears for Fears slow-jazz-influenced percussion.
Kate McGill’s “California Gurls” cover
My number three favorite thing in the world (after hunting hats and kitties but before pillows with faces and limbs) is any cover done in a style very different from the original. For example, Nouvelle Vague‘s bossa nova covers of 80s new wave songs and the 3Oh!3 “Starstrukk” cover by Marina and the Diamonds.
Another example of my Number Three Favorite Thing in the World is Kate McGill‘s cover of “California Gurls” by Katy Perry (featuring Snoop Dogg)! McGill takes a song that is originally full of late 80s hip-hop-inspired (think De La Soul, specifically “Me Myself and I” and their more recent track “Respect”) electropop intro and overall beats and semi-70s-funk reminiscent pop beat undertones and turns it into a slowed down, acoustic ballad.
Penguin Prison
The first thing I thought when I heard “Something I’m Not” was “this sounds like an 80s band whose name I can’t think of right at this moment.” When I listened to “The Worse it Gets,” I thought “IT IS SOOOOOOOOOO 80s!!!”
It’s seriously all in the synths of the two songs. Okay, I lied. It’s also in the singer’s voice. Doesn’t he sound like some 80s singer from Style Council or maybe even Duran Duran, particularly in the song “Rio” but higher pitched? The song “The Worse it Gets” really has a Hall and Oates feel (particularly their song “Your Kiss is on My Lips”). “Animal Animal” has a slowed-down Culture Club feel.
Essentially, Penguin Prison is an amalgam of various 80s electopop bands, creating a band that fits into today’s 80s redux pop culture that has brought back the Member’s Only jacket, acid wash, and spandex pants.