Artist: Nikki And The Dove
Label: Mercury Records
Release: 2012
Length: 45:12
Rating: 4/5
Nikki And The Dove is a Swedish duo that blends the elements of a dreamy soundscape built on electronic keyboards, synths and programming (sound loops), balanced against programmed beats, often with the weight of tribal, sampled rhythms. The whole thing works as a veil draped over the female vocal, which is pushed right into the absolute center. It’s a dominant voice that combines the sugary pop rhetoric of the eighties with the eccentric outbursts of a Björk. Yep. We can talk about a kind of independent electronic pop, and the portmanteau indietronica is extremely handy here.
The band has only been around for two years, but in that short time they’ve successfully made themselves noticed with single releases for the songs DJ, Ease My Mind, The Fox, Tomorrow, Mother Protect and The Drummer. All of those tracks are included on their studio debut as well.
The female vocal can come across as sweet, fragile and doll-like, but thanks to the production it can also sound dreamy, cold, alienated, even extraterrestrial. It’s surrounded by tribal rhythmic and sub-rhythmic loops with a dance feel, while soft, seductive veils of synthesized soundscape arch above. Kate Bush’s voice would fit nicely into a story like this (the song Mother Protect). Even though we’re talking about electronica, the compositions aren’t trivially banal; they’re shot through with a remarkable sense of refined songwriting, one that combines the soft sailing of easy listening with complex jumps between individual rhythmic passages. So we can conclude that Nikki & The Dove are meant, first and foremost, for listening! This band’s music demands your full attention. Despite its clear pop element, the music keeps a distinctly strong alternative connotation throughout, which makes it best suited for spinning in clubs, aimed at a select audience. The bigger labels have caught the scent of it too, like Mercury Records, and so »indietronica«, with this release as well, is getting more and more popular in the new millennium, even mainstream.
In the pompous chorus melodies that occasionally burst out of this release (the songs In Our Eyes, Mother Protect, Somebody (it’s hard not to hear a parody of Madonna’s Lucky Star in it) or Under The Bridges) you can trace the influence of eighties synth pop rhetoric, which is hinted at especially by the integration of synth curtains, i.e. sound structures that shamelessly breathe the eighties. The song The Gentle Roar is actually the basic inspiration behind the design of the album cover, as well as the whole booklet. An imitation of Afro tribal rhythms via rhythmic loops, combined with a melody of almost gently narrative yet commanding bearing, brings to life a true picture of the jungle of the Black continent. Interestingly, that feeling (sampled loops of tribal rhythms) sticks with most of the album. Songs like Love to the Test or In Our Eyes, thanks to the combination of verse melodies and the use of a synth curtain (in the background), evoke rich sentimental feelings of the synth pop idiom of the golden eighties.
What matters, though, is that from the first second to the last, this album stirs up a first-rate cerebral, transcendental experience! But only if you switch off all logic and reason when you sit down to listen to it. It leads you into a state of rapture. And that’s its basic purpose. The album isn’t too long, despite its 12 tracks. At the same time it brings a high degree of variety in the compositions and a high melodic yield, and it will be tailor-made for everyone who is drawn to the work of similar bands built on an essentially »electronic« foundation! The range of such bands is very diverse, but they share common denominators: from Goldfrapp and M83 to The Wombats, even Hot Chip and everything in between. It’s worth noting that, on top of all that, Nikki And The Dove occasionally even bump into post-punk structures on one side (The Fox), as well as the »new wave« rhetoric of the eighties. Through all of this, the band managed to deliver a distinctive album, which means they can calmly build on it, planting their own recognizable expressive identity on future albums.
Lineup
Malin Dahlström – vocals
Gustaf Karlöf – programming, synthesizers, keyboards
Production
Nikki And The Dove
Track list
- Tomorrow
- The Drummer
- In Your Eyes
- The Gentle Roar
- Mother Protect
- Last Night
- Somebody
- Love to the Test
- DJ, Ease My Mind
- Winterheart
- The Fox
- Under the Bridges
