Firefly Effect
Everything Is Beautiful And You Are The Reason
Perfect Pop Records/Solerød Records

Another short little gem of perfect pop. Firefly Effect used to be Truls Solerød Johnsen's one man band. He released the EP Strange Girls in 2006 and later the band has expanded.

This half hour album was released a few months ago, but it deserves all the publicity it can get. After a short ethnic sounding "Hello", Everything Is Beautiful And You Are The Reason continues like a condensed version of half the Perfect Pop catalogue. Four happy hummable 1960s flavoured summer songs for all seasons. The characteristic Farfisa organ and charming male and female vocals as of albums by The Tables, The Release Party, Ethnobabes etc. are present. "I'd Do It Again" even gives reverberations of The Turtles' classic "Happy Together".

Then strange things start to happen, beginning with the short instrumental "Just Passing By". The tempo is turned up, the beat turned more mechanical and the keyboards sound close to vintage, let's say... 1980. The songs are not that immediate melodic compared to the first ones. We're talking about the synth-pop of that era (early Human League, Depeche Mode or something). There's also a relative rough synth-rock number towards the end, "Strange Girls", a re-recording of the title track of the 2006 EP. In between the band seems to try to mix the 1960s and 1980s flavoured songs. The result is closer to the 1990s or 2000s than the 1970s. The nearly instrumental "Love Is In The Air" with honky-tonk piano, washes of synths and wordless female vocals is one of a kind and one of the most interesting tracks of the lot.

After all and all in all a quite unique Perfect Pop release. And the charm is luckily still there!

Copyright © 2009 JP