LINDSTRØM AND CHRISTABELLE AND THE SPACE IGLOO
October 22nd, 2009 by Max
Lindstrøm, circa yesterday
Do you you remember the first time you heard “I Feel Space,” and thought, “Gee, wouldn’t it be great if, instead of just referencing Moroder in a way some terrible critic will eventually describe as ‘cheeky,’ Lindstrøm would just straight-up make a Moroder album, but, like, the twenty-first century version?”
Ha! How young you were: because what you really meant was: “I wish Lindstrøm would make album after album of 10-minute-plus space-prog-disco jams influenced by a variety of Germans from the 1970s, and Vangelis.” And he granted that wish, because he heard you, inside his space igloo orbiting Oslo, where he entertains guests and uses marijuana freely, by making such albums as Lindstrøm and Pris Thomas and Where You Go I Go Too and Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas II, which is the second album he made with Prins Thomas, a frequent guest of the Oslo-orbiting space igloo.
And yet, if you did, in fact, say, “Where, and when, will I be able to hear Lindstrøm do Giorgio, instead of Vangelis, or Jan Hammer, or fucking Cluster?” you can be forgiven, because your question is answered: you can hear it in the comfort of your own home, on January 18, because he is releasing an album called Real Life Is No Cool with Christabelle, who, God knows why, used to be called Solale, and is probably actually Prins Thomas.
(You’ll notice that I’ve made the unbelievably sexist assumption that this is Lindstrøm’s album more than it is Christabelle’s. This is partly because I don’t know anything about Christabelle, and also because I am confused by my feelings for Lindstrøm in an exciting way, and how can I be sexist, if I am gay, or at least bi-curious?)
Now, I can already hear your disco-nerd boners sucking blood from your pot bellies as you get ready to yell at me: “This isn’t Moroder! This doesn’t sound anything like Moroder! Your blog is terrible!” All of which is true. I mean: it does sound like Moroder, in the same way that WYGIGT sounded like Vangelis, which means, sort of, in fits and starts, here and there. But the Moroder comparison is the way in to the record, for me; it’s how to start listening to it and thinking about it. Because, let’s be honest, you don’t put your name on a synth disco album with a female singer without paying tithes to Moroder and Donna Summer. Lindstrøm is doing his own thing here the way he’s always done his own thing, which is to take his favorite records (or what I assume are his favorite records) and reimagine them: what would this sound like if it were released in 2009? And also, if I made it sound like we just drank a lot of cough syrup in the studio?
As you can guess, the whole thing is fucking ridiculous. Every day I have a new favorite track; the missteps are few and far between. “Lovesick” sounds a little bit like that N.E.R.D. song “Lapdance” (LOL, obviously), but is mostly its own stuttering, stomping beast; “High and Low” is a radar-pinging slow jam with a smoking guitar solo; “Baby Can’t Stop” sounds like the funnest night out, ever. Truth is, I might like it more even than all those blunted synth jam sessions, and that’s saying a lot—I mean, the real truth is, there are a couple tracks on here as good as “I Feel Space”—and that says everything.
Max:
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