May’s Viola thingymabob
This month’s Viola song, “Break the News Gently”, is so 80s that I think my hair permed and poofed up while I listened to it. It also wins the most distracting sound effect of the year award for those small pops that, uh, pop out throughout the song in a really sneaky way and sound like very modern gadget/PC program notification sound effects, which lead to me constantly checking my surroundings for the source through the first listen of the song. The highlight of the song is the sax solo, a tribute to all those out-of-place sax solos that 80s synthpop was obsessed with for whatever bizarre reason and which sounds perfectly authentic: while most of Break the News Gently has a clear 00s-band-timetravels-to-80s sound, the solo sounds like a genuine relic that hid in the time machine and got ported back with the duo as they returned to their own time.
As a whole, the song is – as they say – Quite Good. A little bit of 80s synthpop never hurts anyone. Gorgeous gorgeous 80s synthpop.
Rambling Fox 