Unlikely Summer Jams 2007: Bang Gang

lostmarbles, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

"Inside, we got to know girls who had never considered taking their own lives. We fed them drinks, danced with them until they became unsteady, and led them out to the screened-in veranda. They lost their high heels on the way, kissed us in the humid darkness, and then slipped away to throw up demurely in the outside bushes. Some of us held their heads as they vomited, then let them rinse their mouths with beer, after which we got back to kissing again. The girls were monstrous in their formal dresses, each built around a wire cage. Pounds of hair were secured atop their heads. Drunk, and kissing us, or passing out in chairs, they were bound for college, husbands, child-rearing, unhappiness only dimly perceived--bound in other words, for life." (1993, p. 235)

Like Sofia Coppola's dreamier adaptation, Jeffrey Eugenides' novel The Virgin Suicides very vividly evokes the dull, slow-burning boredom of a teenage summer. Air's soundtrack to the film magically matched the flowy seventies shots of Kirrsten Dunst and her onscreen sisters, adding a lush layer of sensuality to the tragic tale of teen ennui. For their second album, Icelandic ex-triphoppers Bang Gang seem to have followed Air's lead, creating tracks that are more soundtrack than song. Sure they have vocals and even choruses, but they lack the comfort a song's climax and resolution offers, instead presenting us with swaths of atmosphere.

Released in the US in April 2007, their 2003 album, Something Wrong, is anything but. Having completely dropped the forced trip hop beats of the previous LP, You, main Bang Ganger Bardi Johannsson now focuses on simple expanse and emotion. Wrapped in moody guitar, the demo for Follow most closely resembles Air's Playground Love (check out the surreal singing chewing gum video). A spaced-out invitation to launch into the stars, moody and melancholy, the track offers momentary glimpses of discordant terror, only to phase out complacently at the abrupt ending.

It's Allright, here in a live version, takes an equally swathy tack that is especially effective around its 2.40 mark, when the drums really roll in, different vocal tracks start to overlap, and the rhodes organ makes all other cares float off into the distance. Eardrums Shall Fail has details of an interesting remix competition (now sadly over) of this song, as well as the great Shout Out Out Out Out remix of the almost Interpol-esque gloomfest Find What You Get. If you still feel inclined to attempt a remix, here are the separate anatomical parts.

One more link, for cover-fanatics like me. Youtube has the summer allergy inducing video for Bang Gang's jangly cover of the Supremes' sixties classic Stop! In the Name of Love.