The Thousands

There’s just so many things to admire about The Tough Alliance. Campness, cheese, vitality, and hooks galore; all the good things about pop music that some have forgotten in oceans of pretentiousness and never-as-good-as-the-original recycling. Remember that clip for First Class Riot where they danced around like Wham with sexualised dolphins projected to a wall behind them, playing drums and dancing like doofus’? It’s bliss. Camp while packed full of tawdry violence. A couple of guys that would down Vodka Raspberry snorkels then proceed to knife you in the alley. At least that’s what they threatened/promised.

It was violence as a synonym for passion, for the pursuit of happiness, and First Class Riot, along with drug/love song Holiday, and the earlier tinny keyboard pop-hop of Make It Happen that made this stuff pretty much irresistible. If you didn’t get it, you probably listened to too much bad metal / were too tough / took yourself too seriously / are included in the earlier first par jibe.

Now there’s Ceo, one half of the alliance – the less cheekboned half. Gone solo, but not weakened. The boyish charm hasn’t left and the reach for the happy is still there. Ceo touches on the more thoughtful, produced and ambient. It’s pop electronica but without the solarium tan and pouted lips – and it’s still for cheesy grins. Mediterranean guitar. Tribal beats. Chello. Strings. Bad vox. It shouldn’t work, TTA shouldn’t have worked, but it does. And I used to listen solely to punk.