TIN PAN ALLEY VIA COPENHAGEN ALBUM BONNIER RELEASE: APRIL 27, 2001 REVIEW: AUGUST 1, 2001

It is my conviction that stupid music makes people stupid. That does it somewhat hard for me to decide how to approach Swedish quartet Tin Pan Alley's debut album. On one hand, there is a bunch of pretty good pop songs on "Via Copenhagen". You may have heard the minor radio hits "Star" or "Not Exactly".
On the other hand some of the songs are really unintelligent. "Yippee-I" for instance, which is hard to listen to without starting to associate to repulsive songs like "I'm Blue" and the likes. I am so infernally fed up with that kind of vocoder-distorted voices.
Strangely enough, the singles really bring this album to a low level. Maybe with the exception of "My Love Has Got a Gun". There is some really good material on the album that thirst to death in the dry landscape of commercialism. An album without the hideous "Yippee-I", "Star" and "Not Exactly" should probably make me, and the rest of the world, much happier.

ANDERS WIIK