Tuesday, October 8, 2024

The Courettes - The Soul Of . . . The Fabulous Courettes

Hey-ho, let’s go!  Where, you ask?  Back in time my friends, with the raucously retro sound of The Courettes, that’s where!
Danish-Brazilian couple Flavia and Martin Couri love the sounds of the Sixties, and they ain’t afraid to show it on their latest album The Soul Of . . . The Fabulous Courettes.  It’s an honest hommage, but they bring their own energy, slashes of darkness, and knowing nudge and wink to the songs and sounds that they generate.  It’s fun fun fun folks, it's mono 7 incher vibes to get your tush moving, and then you can catch all the clever musical allusions afterwards.
So whaddya get in this time travelling sound machine?
Whomping backbeats?  Check! Martin Couri whacks out plenty of these, starting with the
Martin and Flavia Couri - monochrome and marvellous
Pic by Soren Solkær
opening track ‘You Woo Me’, with its fairground organ, Flavia’s slinky vocal, and gloriously tumbling last line to its verses.  He goes all Spector with the rhythm on ‘Wall Of Pain’, which opens with dreamy, slurring string-like sounds then gets tied together by a bass/guitar line that owes quite a few bucks to The Four Tops’ ‘I Can’t Help Myself’ (aka ‘Sugar Pie Honey Bunch’).  There’s a fetching tambourine-led boom-cha-cha moment too, for extra entertainment.
You want a Wall Of Sound smacking you around the ears?  Goddamn it, you got it!  Have a listen to ‘Keep Dancing’, which wraps string sounds and twinkling guitar around another stomping beat, while they splash copious amounts of reverb everywhere.  The verses come with a sweet and yearning vocal from Flavia, but meld into a defiant chorus of “I’ll keep dancing on my own, I feel so much better now you’re dead and gone”, with a terrific hook, “hey hey” interjections from Martin, and reinforcements in the shape of tubular bells.  Yes, tubular bells!  And those chimes crop up on ‘Don’t Want You Back’ too, which opens with an echoing vocal over a throbbing beat and little else, till the chorus crashes in with a three chord descending riff.  There’s a catchy ooh-la-la doo-wopping segment too, and a hard to ignore coda to boot.
You like a bit of cheesy girl group spoken narration?  There’s some of that on ‘Wall Of Pain’ too, and on ‘Boom Boom Boom’, a tribute to the charms of a drummer, featuring the lines “Charlie was my darling from Day One, When he’s sitting at this drums I’m under his thumb”.  Which means, as Flavia tells us in Shangri-Las mode, that some fella called Richard is getting his ring back.  The verses are very Shangri-Las Sixties pop too, simple and jangling, but the “My heart goes boom boom boom boom out of my chest” hook hints at less innocence.
And speaking of less innocent, they can crank things up into garage rock territory too.  ‘Here I Come’ is agitated and all action in a way that recalls Blondie – “I’m gonna git ya, git ya, git ya some day” sings Flavia – as they reached back for the rough and tumble of 60s stuff likes The Nerves’ ‘Hanging On The Telephone’.  Flavia’s guitar buzzes through the slam dunk riff to the punchy chorus, and she adds a razor-edged solo just to keep you on your toes.  ‘Better Without You’ is a breathless gallop too, that back beat kicking your ass while Ms Couri spits out a snarky lyric en route to the irresistible descending chorus.  It’s got a whiff of the Yardbirds in post-Clapton mode about it, like ‘Heart Full Of Soul’ grabbed by the scruff of the neck and dragged onto a sweaty dance floor.
I could go on, and tell you about the snappy, hip-wiggling ‘SHAKE!’, or the Motown-ish ‘Stop! Doing That’, with its candy chorus, handclaps, and jangling Beach Boys guitar, or . . . ah, you get the picture.
The Soul Of . . . The Fabulous Courettes ain’t profound and it ain’t perfect. But it’s affectionate and smart and clever, and delivered with bratty chutzpah and exotic looking guitars.  Get it while it's hot!
 
The Soul Of . . . The Fabulous Courettes is out now on Damaged Goods Records, and can be ordered here.

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