Miike Snow – ‘Miike Snow’ album review

Two Swedes and an American walk into a bar, sit down and order their drinks. The two Swedes are lost for words and out of work. “I don’t get it,” one says to the other, “we’ve written and produced for the likes of Madonna, Kyle and Jennifer Lopez. We’ve even won a Grammy for Britney’s ‘Toxic’, and we still can’t find work.”

The American then pipes up: “Well I’m buggered then, I’ve only worked with Daniel Merriweather.”

It’s a bad joke for sure, but you at least get the picture of what we are dealing with here. Stockholm-based producing team Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg, better known as Bloodshy & Avant, the men who took Spears all the way to the top before she tied the knot, got up the duff, went mental and reached for the shears. Well, they’ve teamed up with American Andrew Wyatt, whose CV includes working with Mark Ronson (famed for plagiarising and over producing) on Daniel Merriweather’s Love & War, in order to claim all copyrights on their colour-by-numbers electro-pop debut as musical enigma, Miike Snow.

And as far as hard times go, the music industry is really suffering at the moment. Illegal downloading, a recession, and another round of Louis Walsh’s performing pets John and Edward in the X-Factor, even I’m starting to worry for Simon and his gossamer of credibility; even I’m starting to think that they are making a mockery of the show. So when there is literally no talent to cash in on, it’s no wonder producers decide to start polishing their own turds in hope of the Midas touch.

Pissing up the post of Radio 1’s playlist won’t have done their image any harm either, especially as their eponymous album swims in a slipstream of Drive Time discothèque. ‘Black & Blue’ and ‘Animal’ pulsate with rousing piano-led choruses, auto-tuned falsettos and memorable melodies, but an album full of padded-pop equivalents leaves it somewhat of a throwaway listen.

With an equal weighting of pensive lyrical lines and mediocre dancefloor fizz, listening to Miike Snow turns out to be as simulating as listening to your best mate drunkenly sob about how he thinks his girlfriend is cheating on him while you’re all on a lads holiday in Ibiza. And if you do enjoy said vocations in Ibiza and music to be indifferent towards, then you’ll be happy washing your sins in the likes of this as you’ve probably bedded the girlfriend yourself.