Aquarium (1997) - Aqua

A few reviews ago, I wrote that while I may come across like an insufferable hipster, my wider taste in music would debunk such a title, and that future reviews would aim to prove this point. Well, that time has come. I'm fully prepared to be stripped of any perceived trendiness, my taste to be questioned and my reputation tarnished, and you should be too. Because I, without the slightest hint of irony or guilt, actually rather like the music of Aqua, and I'm about to tell you why.

In 1997, Barbie Girl hit the airwaves and filtered through to the limited outlets accessible to 6-year-old me, which just goes to show how much of a mega-hit it was. Outside of the local bands, orchestral music and occasional 70's stuff that my parents listened to, I'd heard of Barbie Girl, two or three Spice Girls singles and was aware there was a band called Boyzone - until I started pursuing music on my own, this was really all I knew. And when you're a fledgling music enthusiast, knowing that you want to fly free of the acoustic nest your parents curated but not really knowing what the world has to offer, you gravitate to what little you recognise. I vividly remember being in a charity shop (Scope, if you wanted to know) in maybe 2001 and seeing the cassette tape of Aquarium up on a rack of pre-owned tapes for, I want to say, £1.50. I asked the volunteer to reach it down for me, even though I was taller than her (I knew she had a kick stool but she didn't use it). I was drawn to the bright colours, the band's eerie glow, and Lene's tall hair and bushy eyelashes, and the cartoony logo with the eye motif was very my kind of thing. I checked the back, recognised Barbie Girl and suppose I must have thought to myself, "I understand what this is". And that is the story of how I came to purchase my first album.

Similarly to how I feel regarding OPM's Menace To Sobriety, I don't believe my appraisal of the music is softened by nostalgia. If anything, I have a better appreciation now for the musicality of the more blatant schtick songs, which I definitely shunned quite early into my development, well aware that there was nothing 'cool' about listening to Barbie Girl in the 21st century. Ultimately, it's the quality that keeps me coming back, and you're about to see just how highly I regard it.

1. Good Morning Sunshine
2. Be A Man
3. Calling You
4. Doctor Jones
5. Roses Are Red
6. Lollipop (Candyman)
7. Happy Boys & Girls
8. Turn Back Time
9. Barbie Girl
10. My Oh My
11. Heat Of The Night

Total Points: 37/55
Average Score: 6.73

You might have noticed that this album has received my highest score yet. Given how my system works, it's very high indeed (I'd say anything above 6 is high, I certainly don't see anything breaking the 8 mark), and there's a part of me that feels a bit incredulous about this, even though I scored it myself and stand by my verdict, just because of the general consensus that Aqua are something of a gimmick band. Which isn't an unfounded myth - songs with subjects including a plastic doll, a fictional archeologist, and a medieval kingdom don't exactly make for a cultured listening experience. Combine with these singles goofy, slapstick music videos that exaggerate the band's wackiness and sense of humour, and it's easy to brush them off as a juvenile act that caters to only the most low-brow of audiences, probably containing more children than adults. But there's a lot more to the band, and this overarching tawdriness is, in fact, just the most pronounced of many concurrent facets they possess.

Before we look any closer, let's reinterpret their zaniness by declaring them self-aware, tongue-in-cheek entertainers who want to create positive music designed to be danced to and to put a smile on listener's faces. I don't think this is far fetched at all, and if this is the goal of their music (and its corresponding promotional videos), mission accomplished. Now, let's focus on some of the brilliant qualities Aqua have that often go overlooked. Firstly, Aquarium is one of the most flawlessly produced albums I've ever heard - not one note, whether sung, played or programmed, is misplaced or nonchalantly fumbled, and even though it's fair to call this an album of electronic music, it never feels overly mechanical or computerised. The record has a consistent, distinct flavour, remaining bright and slick but still incorporating a variety of timbres and moods - ranging from the familiar eurodance tropes of Roses Are Red to contemplative, wistful ballads like Turn Back Time, and even one (admittedly ill-judged) latin-influenced song. While future endeavours feel a little more detached from song to song, this record remains fluid (excuse the pun) and succinctly part of it's own bubble (excuse that pun too please). No track is laboured or excessively long; they are expertly judged by in-band production duo Søren Rasted and Claus Norreen to maintain the fit and feel of their vivid, caricature image during this era.

Aqua's greatest asset is, or should I say are, their lead vocalists, and the sheer contrast between them. Barbie Girl epitomises the extremes of this schism, with Lene's high-pitched, somersaulting voice feminised further still under the guise of Barbie, while René's gruff, baritone Ken provides a macho counterpoint full of swagger and attack that serves as the perfect yin to her yang. This polarity makes their vocals perfect for character acting, and we see it time and time again in the likes of My Oh My, Doctor Jones and Lollipop (Candyman), to name a few examples. René's contributions often err on the edge of rap, and fully take this form in the Middle 8 of my personal favourite track, Good Morning Sunshine. Strangely enough, it's the least cheesy he sounds on the entire album, helped in no small part by the ballad's lush, accessible but poetic imagery and velvet-rich yet relaxed tone - something I'm sure a lot of people would never have expected to be said about an Aqua song! For Lene, Aquarium acts as something of a showcase, giving her chance to really exercise her vocal elasticity. In addition to her trademark brazen soprano, she takes on a softer, more delicate approach in Be A Man, plays up her sugary intonation in Lollipop (Candyman), and shows she can be an absolute powerhouse when she belts out an almighty sustained note during the climax of Calling You.

Along with Good Morning Sunshine, Be A Man is a beautifully performed and vulnerable model of a 90's pop ballad, with the addition of glistening electric piano and expertly dispersed backing harmonies to add a cosy yet sparkling aura to the sound. One notable omission from the original album is Didn't I, a bonus track featured on many re-releases of Aquarium, and bumped up to part of the core tracklist on the 25th anniversary edition vinyl. Had this qualified, it would have been a third 5-pointer for me, notching the album up to an even higher overall score (an astounding 7.0). This song, an up-tempo dance track in their familiar euro flavour, is actually closer in subject matter to Aqua's more serious, slower songs, and takes full advantage of Lene's sweeping vocal ability. Their kitsch phenomenon Barbie Girl, corny and overplayed though it is, still deserves credit for how well assembled it is, as well as it's playful lyrics and sheer audacity. The only real flop is Heat Of The Night; it doesn't matter how big a pinch of salt you take the band with, this will always be cringe-inducing - as packed as it is with every imaginable Spanish stereotype, it feels more exploitative than inspired, and would definitely be inconceivable today.

I haven't set out to convince anyone to fall in love with this album - whereas with City Pop, I'm something of an advocate, when it comes to music like this, I just kind of accept that it's not for everyone, especially in 2022. You don't personally care for europop from the 1990's? That's fine. It's an acquired taste, I'll live. I suppose what I've really done here is written a defence for a band that has always been brushed off as a stunt, a group play-acting at being musicians, and have tried to quash this popular opinion as I feel it is unreflective of their true nature. To me, they're experts in their field, virtuosos of their art and dynamos of their time, and I know that tracks from this particular album will always snake their way onto my playlists, then, now and in years to come.

Menace To Sobriety (2000) - OPM

It's time for another review, but before I can proceed, there is first some important backstory that needs addressing. Think of it of an origin story for how I got to the point where I'm reviewing albums, for primarily personal benefit, in 2021, on a blog called The Sound System.

Let me set the scene: It's the year 2002 and you're a late-to-the-party boy of 11 who has just been gifted a personal CD player for his birthday. As someone who has yet to develop any kind of individual taste in music, you requested with it the things that everyone at school was listening to - S Club 7's Sunshine and the latest instalment in the 'Now' series, Now That's What I Call Music! 50. Still getting used to the audio format, more fascinated with the novelty of not needing to rewind anything than actually listening, you witlessly play Don't Stop Movin' on repeat, and the few singles from the compilation album whose titles you recognise. Naturally, Now 50 is a trendy conversation subject at school, and your friend Alistair, who you respect because he's popular but not cool (at least not too cool to talk to you), passingly mentions that track 12 is decent. Because your personality is underdeveloped and you apparently hang off the every word of anyone nice enough to humour you with their opinions, you run home after school and skip to OPM's Heaven Is A Halfpipe. And then, for perhaps for the first time in your life, you actually properly listen to a song, absorbing the sound of a skateboard panning from left to right in time with a tack piano sample and super-chilled guitar lick alternating between two simple chords. You listen to the layers pile on and peel off and, before you know it, you've autonomously decided, with no outside input, that this music is fucking cool. And this marks the first step of your musical journey, and developing a musical mind of your own.

As someone whose prior exposure to music is so negligible, you really know very little about how things are done in the music industry. But you sure are a tactile kid who loves to pull out the sleeves of your only two albums and pore over the pictures and liner notes! So it doesn't take long to notice the recurring phrase "taken from the album '______'" and see that, sure enough, a whole album of OPM songs exists, and it's called Menace To Sobriety. You're 11, you don't understand the punny title or know what sobriety is. You ask your dad to look for it next time he goes to the shops on his lunch hour, as he works in a nearby city with an HMV (you've already scoured Woolworths to no avail). Maybe the red flag was in the title. Maybe it was in the cover art. Or maybe it was in that little black and white sticker that your poor protective father decided to take so seriously. He's a very honest kind of guy, so where other fathers might tell their child that the record store simply doesn't have it stocked, or that it's too expensive, he does this: he buys the CD, listens to it through (he even checks out the bonus CD-Rom, removable only by lifting the jewel case insert to reveal a close crop of someone's rather ample cleavage) and tells you that, in his responsibility as a parent, he cannot let you have this album.

Never had it occurred to me that the scratches in the chorus of Heaven Is A Halfpipe were any more than a series of stylistic embellishments, or that a quarter of the middle 8 had been cut out of the compilation's version because it referenced drugs. I don't remember what happened next. All I know is that, for whatever reason, it didn't long for him to concede, and I don't believe I underwent any dirty tactics to get him to hand it over. Apparently my acceptance of his initial decision demonstrated enough maturity to change his mind. Straining to remember, I'm pretty sure I was forbidden from using the CD-Rom (which was of zero interest to me anyway, particularly when he told me that the music videos were full of people throwing up in toilets), and I swear he told me that I just 'wasn't allowed to listen to it much' - which is a weak bargain that can't possibly be enforced, but one that I took seriously given the trust he was placing in me.

As it goes, only the most blatant profanities showed up on my radar - the majority of the 'explicit content' went right over my head. For example, for several years, I genuinely thought Dealerman was about counterfeiting clothes, because I took the opening lines literally and didn't pay attention to the rest. Lyrical content doesn't tend to grab me in the way all the other musical elements do (this will come to be a recurring factor in my reviews), so unless there's a really succinct thematic connection with the music itself, I zone out of what is being said, and instead focus on how it's being delivered. And it just so happens that the most debauch songs that my father was hoping to shield me from were the ones that appealed less to me musically. Whether one factor informed the other on a subliminal level is impossible to say, but here I am, 20 years on, with no gang or drug habit, and a song ranking that very closely resembles the order I'd have picked as a kid:

1. Heaven Is A Halfpipe
2. Fish Out Of Water
3. Brighter Side
4. Sound System
5. Unda
6. El Capitan
7. Reality Check
8. Better Daze
   
9. Undercover Freak
10. Stash Up
11. Dealerman
12. Trucha
    (Exempt from total score: Interludes Punanny, Rage Against The Coke Machine & 15 Minutes, hidden track The War On Drugs)

Total Points: 38/60
Average Score: 6.33

Menace To Sobriety is full of simple chord sequences that teeter back and forth, thumping breakbeats and turn-of-the-Millennium record scratches. There's great variety in guitars; everything from rich, steely strumming, to ska-style, upbeat stabs, to fills of fuzzy, skate-punk-esque noise. This palette of textures is used to great effect, upping the ante step-by-step as Better Daze reaches its climax, or adding fantastic conviction to the bridge of Fish Out Of Water, the album's other main standout after Heaven Is A Halfpipe. Crisp, sincere harmonies of 'ahhs' compliment the franker tone of Brighter Side's chorus, while the optimism expressed in underdog anthem Unda is matched with upbeat guitar accents and a spirited saxophone (of all instruments!) solo. As I've mentioned before, I love when music does exactly what it says, when the lyrics match the sound, and nothing exemplifies this synergy more than Sound System (which has been popping into my head ever since I named this blog). This reggae-infused track really is the party atmosphere its lyrics are describing, that is begging to be blasted on a 'sound system in my backyard' with the intention to 'wake up the town'.

The album's greatest asset is that its music is never compromised, even when the themes aren't there to be taken seriously. Even something as tongue-in-cheek as an ode to Captain Morgan's Rum is set to a kicking backing track, making sure that less solemn topics are never pushed into straight up joke territory. The weakest points come in the form of interludes (sidenote: thanks to OPM I've added the word 'coke' to the band Rage Against The Machine in conversation more times than I've said it correctly) and the acoustic hidden track, which (on my copy at least) is inexplicably censored after an album full of impropriety. Thankfully, these don't impact the score, but the somewhat droning chorus of Trucha isn't to my taste, and comes across kind of damp compared to the rest of the record.

Menace To Sobriety does not have critical acclaim or, from what I can tell, much of a retrospective cult following. Perceived as a something of a one-hit wonder, OPM never went on to hold the attention of the worldwide musical spotlight their debut single granted them. Why this is, I cannot say - I'm not savvy to the contextual factors, such as marketing, band history or record labels. But as far as the content of this album goes, there is sufficient substance and well-engineered balance to show that they had their collective finger on the pulse. Its full of self-awareness, wit, charisma and an outlook that dryly bridges the gap between darkness and joy. It's such a straightforward effort that it barely warrants an analytical review like this - it defeats the point. It's not music made for evaluating, it is music made for enjoying and extracting the essence out of life's ups and downs. I wanted to write about it because it's clear today that it had quite an impact on my formative years, but the high regard in which I hold it isn't just born out of nostalgia, but out of genuine appreciation for its quality. If nothing else, I've done my bit on shining a light on an album you might never have considered may exist.