- Artist
- Chungking
- Label
- Institute
- Release date
- 13th August 2007
- Genre
- Pop
Brighton duo go synth-pop on inconsistent, but fun third album
With their first album The Hungry Years, Brighton-based Chungking served up a collection of sensual chillout cuts, beloved of the Ibiza crowd. So it is perhaps logical that, with the band’s Jessie Banks possessing a voice similar to that of Alison Goldfrapp, Chungking have mirrored (the group) Goldfrapp’s shift from downtempo to the dancefloor. However, while Goldfrapp swathed their sound in Giorgio Moroder-style electro, it’s to early-Eighties synth pop that Chungking have turned.
This of course is no new thing and consequently, bits of this third album are reminiscent of Scissor Sisters (most notably on the infectiously upbeat Itch & Scratch) and Kylie (the playful Slow It Down is like a remix of Slow). It’s not a complete shift for the band, as the likes of I Love You and Beautiful Inside demonstrate Banks and cohort Sean Hennessey can still pen a sultry ballad. However, ill-advised stabs at Seventies glam rock on Know What You Mean and the ELO-like Baby render Stay Up Forever an at times incoherent collection. Even so, despite a lack of both lyrical clout and a modern spin on the past it harks back to, this is a pleasing second album worth staying up with.
More to try: Goldfrapp: Black Cherry Kate Bush: The Sensual World Kylie: Body Language
