Sometimes you have to just realise that you are beaten, admit defeat and move on to the next job. No, I’m made of more determined stuff than that, so let’s have another go at describing Manu Louis’ strange and mercurial music in a way that at least makes a little sense.
The problem is that it is so wonderfully bonkers that it is difficult to know where to start. It’s pop, I guess…of sorts and it is very European, buoyant, it will make you laugh, it will make you bop around the room like a lunatic, it will make you want to hang out in strange underground Berlin nightclubs, join Iberian beach parties or go to Dutch pop festivals. It is probably just what we need to get this currently fractured world talking to each other again. Imagine if the answer to the world’s problems didn’t lie in skilled diplomacy or insightful policy-making, what if the answer was a collection of mad pop songs made by an eclectic Belgian composer! Imagine that.
But it is more than just pop, it plays with buoyant jazz, moody chanson balladry, video game style electronica, skittering 8bit bleeps and boops, atmospheric washes: it visits classical elegance and surrealist extravagance, children’s TV theme tunes and progressive landscapes. And I bet if I wrote this tomorrow I would come up with a whole different way of describing it.
Oh, I give up, just go and by a copy; it really is great… in its own, unique way. You will thank me…eventually. Maybe not after the first play, or the second, but in time you will come to see its strange majesty. And if you do, try writing a review, it’s beating the hell out of me.
