By Jim Rowland
Danish-Brazilian rock’n’roll sensations The Courettes are back with their fourth album to date – ‘The Soul Of The Fabulous Courettes’. And this time, they’re bigger, wider and deeper than ever before. Straddling garage rock, girl groups, doo-wop harmonies, heartache and all points in between, the slick, sassy and ultra-cool husband-and-wife duo, with numerous guests and helping hands, build on the momentum of predecessor ‘Back In Mono’ with a collection of songs that opens up their sonic scope like never before.
Aiding them in their quest for sonic perfection are a few guest musicians and back room wizards playing some very specific roles. Darian Sahanaja, who worked on the production of Brian Wilson’s ‘Smile’, was brought in to mix the vocals on two tracks, songwriter Richard Gottehrer, who co-wrote the classic ‘I Want Candy’ also helped with mixes, Peter Kehl and Kasper Wagner from Danish band Black Tornado added horns, whilst multi-instrumentalist and long time collaborator Søren Christensen contributes Mellotron, organ, piano and backing vocals while producing the album together with C.T. Levine. Perhaps most impressive of all, and close to the Courettes hearts, is the guest appearance of La La Brooks of The Crystals – the voice of the timeless Phil Spector classic ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’ – singing on two tracks, ‘California’ and ‘Run Run Runaway’, adding plenty of vintage Spector pop sheen to the album, as do the likes of ‘Wall of Pain’ and ‘Stop! Doing That’.
Elsewhere, there’s a bigger Motown influence on more soulful and pop-leaning tracks like ‘Keep Dancing’ and ‘Boom Boom Boom’, ‘Shake!’ and ‘Better Without You’ are neat slices of catchy fuzz pop, and the fuzz continues on the big and bombastic rocker ‘Here I Come’. There’s drama to the slower 60’s pop of ‘Don’t Want You Back’, and a darker twist evident on ‘Lies’ and ‘For Your Love’.
The album manages to retain many of the authentic vintage traits of The Courettes previous work, but with this album moving into ‘stereo fidelity’ from the previous album’s mono approach, there’s a bigger sonic quality, certainly evident on the excellent up-tempo psyche-pop of opener ‘You Woo Me’.
The 13 songs, all self-penned, that make up ‘The Soul Of The Fabulous Courettes’, many of which are lyrically deeper and more personal than previous efforts, all contribute to a progression in sound for the band, whilst still retaining the core identity that has served The Courettes so well so far. Very much a case of onwards and upwards.
- ‘The Soul Of The Fabulous Courettes‘ will be released on Friday (27 September)..
- The ÜK tour kicks off tomorrow (Wednesday 25 September);
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