If Coco Electrik’s grungy sleaze-disco sounds eerily familiar, it’s with good reason. Of course, you might just be confusing them with Garbage’s sleaze-pop, or Moloko’s grunge-disco, but there’s a good chance that you’ve heard them before. Their cover of ‘Tainted Love’ was used for Audi’s Remastered campaign, prompting discussions across the country. Just who was the band that had sleazed-up Marc Almond?
Unfortunately most of this debut album fails to live up to the darkly-glittering promise of that cover version, even if it still manages to throb and gyrate its way through a whole host of dancefloor moves. Opener ‘Hanging Rock’ is a disappointment, a few minutes of misguided atmospherics that seem to have been thrown in as an afterthought, while Apollonia 6 cover ‘Sex Shooter’ proves that lightning and decent cover versions don’t strike twice, sounding more like Bananarama than ‘Tainted Love’s’ poisoned apple. Still, it’s not all shrinking disappointment, as‘Paint It Red’ provides a much-needed burst of concentrated nightclub pheromones, and ‘Apple Pie’ could almost be Kylie at her sultry best.
With so many similar electro-pop outfits lurking in the recent past it’s hard to see Army Behind The Sun enjoying interstellar success, even if Coco Electrik are more than just another bunch of sleaze-pop wannabes. Funkier than Robots In Disguise, dirtier than Moloko, more dishevelled than Garbage, there might still be a spot for them in the corner of the disco, among the crushed plastic glasses and vomit stains. Not the greatest place to hang out, but somehow fitting.