Datarock

DatarockDatarock (Nettwerk)

By Emily Becker
Published: July 14th, 2007 | 9:26am

Originally released by the band on their own Young Aspiring Professionals label back in 2005, the Norwegian duo Datarock’s debut CD has made its way to the U.S. shores without an import price tag. Finally. Datarock’s Frederick Saroea (vocals/guitar) and Ketil Mosnes, Ket-ill to all, (bass/keyboards) hail from Bergen, Norway, and like many bands who’ve grown up outside the U.S. but choose to sing in English, Saroea and Ket-ill have a near encyclopedic command of American pop culture.

As a whole the album’s songs are simple, memorable, and incredibly fun. The lead single, “Fa-Fa-Fa,” immediately grabs the listener and is made for dancing. The genius of Datarock is that they create music that works as well on the dance floor as it does in more mundane settings. The band’s lyrics are so subtly funny that they require a closer listen. “Laurie,” for example, is a playful homage to Laurie Anderson, and her song, “O Superman.” While “Computer Camp Love” references Grease’s “Summer Lovin’” and the Commodore 64 computer. “Sex Me Up” is as addictively amusing as it is catchy, as Saroea tosses sexual clichés (“I’m neither butch or femme / Get on my hands and knees / Come get me won’t you please”) over a taut rhythm section and hyperbolic keyboard line.

Datarock 2007 differs slightly from its 2005 predecessor. Gone are “Maybelline” and “Night Flight To Uranus.” In their stead are four new songs, all of which mark a change towards increasingly complex instrumentation except for “See What I Care.” “Ganguro Girl” is the most intriguing, layering guitar, vocals, strings, and conversation samples without ever seeming weighed down. “I Will Always Remember You” should be just as promising as it features guest vocals from Annie (fellow Norwegian, and all-around Datarock pal), but the song drowns in the string section, and suffers under Saroea’s vocals, which sound more like Saroea doing Sondre Lerche on the Duper Sessions. “The New Song” is a B-side throwaway that proves our boys can spell. Hopefully, it’s just an outlier.

Datarock admits its influences freely, listed on its MySpace page as “the trinity of Talking Heads, DEVO and Happy Mondays!” The Talking Heads influence is obvious, the rhythm guitar and vocals on “Sex Me Up” alone confirm this, while the other two bands don’t seem quite as evident in the songwriting. Perhaps Devo surfaces in the duo’s choice to wear identical sweat suits and sunglasses in public, while “I Used to Dance with My Daddy” hints at the Mondays’ style of multi-layered percussion, one can only guess that Saroea and Mosnes are aspiring to the Ryder brothers’ lifestyle as well.