Schmoof: The Glamour

Schmoof have been playing the bondage-electro-pop game for a while now, and have pretty much got all the ingredients down pat. This is their second album, and is full of summer-like sounds: strong but light-of-touch beats, fizzy synths topped with clear and tuneful vocals; and a general light heartedness and refusal to take things seriously giving the whole record a sunny, come-out-and-play attitude.

Schmoof are particularly at home poking fun at the sillier aspects of the arbitrary rules of attraction: their attitude to this is neatly summarised by the album cover, featuring as it does a glamorous woman and a bloke in PVC trousers… with a builder’s bum. Wrong notes and silly humour are scattered through their tales of brief encounters and backstage romances: backing vocals and fragments of spoken-word dialogue are delivered with a deadpan bathos and in silly voices that make the listener giggle like a fool. So we have songs about unfaithful farmers full of puns about “playing the field” (he gets dismembered by a combine harvester in the end: if you are a farmer, and are unfaithful, and have a girlfriend who knows how to drive a combine harvester, then let that be a warning to you), and hilariously smug backing vocals about being “so shallow!”. These are happy, summery, giggle-inducing tunes…

…Which are tempered by the fact that, when they want to, Schmoof are quite capable of making actually sexy music, thank you very much. So in between the silliness are fizzing, bubbly synths that simultaneously make the feet tap and sound all yearning, and manage to maintain that emotion despite the fact that the backing vocals consist of daft noises spoken in a really silly voice. Pretty good going, really: so if you fancy spending summer listening to some fizzy, summery, tuneful and skipping beats with a sense of humour and an ability to affect – and frankly, why wouldn’t you? – then getting The Glamour might be a good move. Marvellous, sugary-yet-sophisticated electro-pop enjoyment.