First off, I don’t like the name Robots in Disguise, I don’t like it because it is named after the Transformers. Transformers were a fun enough toy when they emerged in the 1980s, but they developed into a bad cartoon and low quality comic that exposed the flimsiness of the whole robots in disguise idea. Zoom forward over 20 years and miss-judged nostalgia lead us to the 1st of three terrible movies by the world’s worst film maker Michael Bay. Sorry, I digress…
Happiness V Sadness is the 3rd album to be released by the electropunk/clash (add your own fad genre title here) and is actually a very enjoyable bunch of electronic pop tunes that (thankfully) have little to do with plastic shape changing robots. Opening track ‘Chains’ sets up the fuzzed electro-pop sound that marks the album, with the twin shouty vocals that recall an off-key English B-52s.
The album jumps around in an enjoyable way and throws in enough different styles and influences to keep you entertained for the 30 minutes or so of run time. Instrumentally it has touches of Devo, most noticeably on ‘Don’t Go’, which is possibly the best track on the album. Early 80s synth-pop is another obvious influence, both in instrumental style and in the flat vocals that have the same blank pop feel that Bananarama specialised in.
The closets counterpart I can think of is Australian pop outfit Architecture in Helsinki, with less distinctive high points but, thankfully, less of the really annoying bits as well.
The band’s rather limited vocals, instrumentation and lyrics are offset pretty successfully by the sparky performance and enjoyable hooks. It isn’t an album that is going to win any awards, but for 30 minutes of simple pop noise it is a lot of fun and a nice change from the earnest beardy folk and male dominated indie acts that we’ve been reviewing in recent weeks.
7/10
By Dorian Rogers
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