Concorde2, 3rd November 2008
I have many guilty pleasures: a baby blue dressing gown I wear on cold mornings, watching Laguna Beach when hungover, and listening to Alphabeat embarrassingly loud. A discomfiting confession I know, yet I can’t help but be drawn in by their Scandinavian pop cheer. Making their second visit to Brighton in a busy year, I followed the youthful masses to their sold out show – for purely journalistic and professional reasons, of course.
Fellow Euro-poppers Das Pop preceded their Danish contemporaries to a warm reception, and with good reason. Their happy-go-lucky pop is cut from the same cloth as the Scandinavian headliners, and with the most mesmerizing member of the band being the one who looks the most likely to murder you in your sleep, it’s hard not to be intrigued, at least. Guitarist Reinhart Vanbergen, with his facial forest and dungarees, resembles the most improbable of candidates to be playing music to the largely underage crowd, but somehow took them by storm.
Opening with album track “Electric 6”, there was a positive energy in the venue for Alphabeat’s arrival on stage. As if high off the music and the general good times, singer Anders SG is a man bereft of the notion of standing still. Always animated and always happy he is the perfect general of the cheery Alphabeat army, guiding the audience through their hand clapping, heel tapping paces. Contrasting with fellow singer and frontwoman Stine, who is the epitome of the word cute, they make an entrancing and charismatic pair.
Playing out a set including new tracks, and ending on a blistering encore of first single “Fascination”, Alphabeat held near complete audience attention from beginning to end. Their clear forte comes in the crafting of catchy, danceable pop songs, and while other bands of a similar nature would put a live presence down to a secondary skill, they successfully marry the two. While it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, it is refreshing to see a brand of modern pop that is as entertaining live as it is catchy.
Words by Dave Drummond
Photography by Mike Turnham
www.myspace.com/thisisalphabeat
