Soda Fountain Rag “It’s Rag Time” (yesboyicecream, 2008)

The antidote to Duffy, Adele, Winehouse et al

Whilst Sarandon may want to kill twee pop (see review elsewhere on site) I’m pretty sure if they heard this they’d immediately reconsider their manifesto. Ragnhild Hogstad Jordahl is from Bergen (that’s Norway) and she makes deceptively uncomplicated pop songs covering universal themes in such a way as to hide their depth. They are cloaked by simplicity; a straightforward guitar riff and some organ sit under ‘You Sit and Wait for Life.’ The title tells you everything you need to know about the song as does ‘The Saddest Boy in Town’, ‘The Army of Silent Kids’ or ‘I Laugh Myself to Sleep’. There’s nothing maudlin about the songs - they skitter playfully between genres, simple folk in the style of a modern day Modern Lovers with echoes of the vocals and the DIY ethic of the Marine Girls, and then there are electro-pop tunes too. ‘Escalator’ tells another tale of seeming inconsequence full of detail about modern life and the tendency to not really connect.

I’m not making this sound very good. Let’s try this; she’s a very engaging performer, and her vocals seduce with a smile as you listen to lines like ‘Everyone I know hopes you die alone’ (‘Go’) behind a giggle of synths. It’s so refreshing to hear this sort of thing these days - it is so simple and direct, contrast it to the over-produced, over-packaged, over-positioned, over-marketed focus group crap that bungs up pop culture. We need something like this to clear out the stinking globs of cholesterol that clog up the arteries of creativity. This cuts through all of that crap and goes straight for the truth with wit and a minimum of fuss and is most welcome to my ears.

Date review added:  Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Reviewer:  David Cowling
Reviewers Rating:
Related web link:  The myspace site - the official site is in Norge