Lindstrom & Christabelle - Real Life is No Cool

Lindstrom & Christabelle - Real Life is No Cool (Smalltown Supersound)

Given the cosmic aesthetic of recent material, it’s hard not to feel that the relationship between Christabelle Silje Isabelle Birgitta Sandoo and Lindstrom is a little analogous to the legendary partnership between Moroder and Summer. She returns after a 4 year gap, to lend her rich, distinctive voice to a collection of songs that shows the Norwegian producer extend his range.

If his more recent material had seen him fail to curb his tendency to reach out into cosmic space and leave the edit button alone, then “Real Life is No Cool” is a return to more pop-orientated structures, albeit undermined slightly by Christabelle’s unusual vocal recording techniques, which apparently are recorded separately to the music, and often spliced at unusual times over the top of Lindstrom’s tracks. There’s a hint of this at the start, with “Looking for What” beginning with some backwards talking. The opener seems like a footnote to 2008’s “Where you go..” , the slow disco-inflected beat being propelled at a fairly pedestrian beat. “Lovesick” keeps up the tension, but despite the presence of some keen piano by Lindstrom, it’s clear that the party has yet to start.

Like a lot of the Scandinavian disco-house that has seen a concurrent return to popularity of the Balearic sound, there’s very little that is new that is being done here - more a subtle synthesis of existing musical memes that is applied with a professional touch. From an initial listening perspective, the hypnotic pulse of songs like “Let it Happen” are rewarding, but beyond that it is difficult to grasp anything of real substance at work here. In fact, it’s the album’s one almost mainstream song that begins to stand out after a while. “Keep it Up” is sugary, early 90’s Paisley Park pop, but there’s a beauty to it that surpasses the Moroder-lite disco that Lindstrom seems all too keen to return to at times.

Perhaps the album’s title is symptomatic of Lindstrom’s desire to return to older themes - “Baby Can’t Stop” is confident, Prelude-esque 80’s disco, whilst “Let’s Practise” is a pastiche of his hero Moroder. Only the rather quixotic stomp of “So Much Fun” colours the latter half of the album with anything remotely new, and it’s frustrating that this is over before it gets going.

For a confident multi-instrumentalist, it’s frustrating that Lindstrom seems happy to lounge in the realm of the superficial and familiar. His track arrangements and production skills infer an ability that is unusual in the sphere of dance music, and as such this cypher of 80’s genres is nothing less than a disappointment despite the undoubted charisma of his guest’s voice.

Toby Frith