Can Alphabeat make it big?
This band is a rare beast, a pop band that write and perform their own songs — but can the six-piece hit the big time?
Recently, Alphabeat were all sitting in a Turkish restaurant near their north London rehearsal studio. When the waitress came over to take their order, she looked at them all — and there are six of them — before asking: “So what is it you guys do?” They replied: “We’re a pop band.”
“She looked a little confused,” says the singer Anders SG. “She asked, ‘How can you be a pop band?’ — like that’s a job that doesn’t even exist any more.”
The waitress may have a point. Strands of popular music are embarrassingly oversubscribed: think of those droopy-eyed singer-songwriters still warm from the cookie-cutter, the skips full of “feisty” girl bands and their “kooky” solo sisters. There are so many blowsy, makeweight guitar bands that the genre “landfill indie” had to be invented. But pop groups who write and perform all their own material? Pop groups who play live, tour and cohabit in a big house (a bit like the Monkees, except it’s in Hackney)? There’s really only Alphabeat, a group who formed while still at school in the small Danish town of Silkeborg, a group whose debut, 2008’s This Is Alphabeat, released a year after they relocated to London, featured a cover of John Lydon’s post-Sex Pistols statement of intent, Public Image, while being stylistically in thrall to poignantly shiny 1980s pop.
“Here, it’s more acceptable to be pop,” says the vocalist Stine B, backstage at the Manchester Evening News Arena. “In Denmark, you can’t be a band and be pop — they are different things — but there’s an honesty in what we do that is understood here. In England, everyone has some pop in them.”
Quite how much pop Alphabeat have in them is being tested nearly every night as they support Lady Gaga on tour. Despite being signed to the same label, Polydor, and with their new record, The Beat Is…, a serious priority, Anders, Stine, the guitarist Lil Anders, keyboard player Rasmus N, bassist Anders R and drummer Troels H still have to put up with a warm-up act’s indignities: truncated stage times, no spotlights or props, not even their new neon logo. Perhaps most upsetting of all is having to follow Semi Precious Weapons, the catastrophically poor “punk” band (think the New York Trolls) signed to the Lady’s new Haus of GaGa imprint. Not that Alphabeat seem bothered. “We’ll be seen by thousands of new people,” Anders says. “Some real fans, some who’ve never heard of us and some who think we’re sort of happy and useless. We love to change their minds...”
“We’re learning to fill the stage,” Stine says. “When we started, we hated crowd-pleasing. We never did ‘hands in the air’, we were hyper-energetic, but shy. People here are happy to ask, ‘So what’s good about your band?’, and you need an answer. But there’s an unwritten law in Denmark — you don’t believe too much in yourself. That was a challenge when we moved here.”
Alphabeat’s initial problem was getting everyone to stop looking at their line-up — guitar, bass, drums and singers — and assuming that they were an indie band. Now they have reinvented themselves again. While recording, the band made Spotify playlists featuring Michael Jackson, Pet Shop Boys, Whigfield and Madonna; as a consequence, The Spell skilfully swaps their early-1980s influences for dancefloor-friendly early-1990s ones. Elsewhere, there’s the slick filter-house of DJ, the debauched Stock Aitken Waterman-go-Ibiza throb of 365 Degrees, the R’n’B aura of Q&A, the classic “happy music with sad lyrics” of their new single, Hole in My Heart, and the wonderfully direct Chess, which begins: “Baby let’s quit playing chess, you’ve been to my address...” Pitch-bend vocals and rave-on piano riffs are heard for the first time in nearly 20 years. The ghosts of Mantronix, Snap! and Black Box hover above it all, their reputations still pristine. “We’re expecting the fan base to change a little,” Stine says. “This is still extrovert and colourful, but it’s less blue-eyed, less straightforward.”
That sounds remarkably close to “mature”, I say.
“It’s definitely a maturing,” Anders agrees. “We spent four years promoting our first album and, after four years, you become very aware of the things you do and don’t like. That process made us want to do something new.”
“We’re not just a band with a particular sound,” Stine says. “We love taking stuff from the past three decades and making that into something that is Alphabeat.”
Ultimately, pop’s only globally recognised currency is the hit. Alphabeat’s 2008 single Fascination went Top 10; The Spell went Top 20. Hole in My Heart needs to succeed. “Are we under pressure?” Anders asks. “Of course! But we think there are plenty of hits on the album.”
“It’s also about who else is out there,” Stine says. “As a pop band, you are measured by hits, and we fully acknowledge that and feel part of that. But we have done the best we can. We don’t sit around and analyse the market.”
“No,” Anders laughs. “We leave that to our manager.”
In Manchester, Alphabeat make the most of their 20 minutes. All six members are squashed onto a patch of blankly lit stage small enough to be swamped by one of Gaga’s wigs, but they don’t let it hold them back. Anders pumps the air, Rasmus bangs his head, Stine never quite lets herself go, but the crowd responds with properly noisy enthusiasm. If all the shows are anything like tonight, Alphabeat’s wishes for themselves are likely to come true.
“It’s fairly simple,” Anders says. “We know we’re not going to be Lady Gaga big, because of the kind of people we are. We’re odd, impulsive. But we want to be recognised as a great, entertaining band, as people who write fantastic songs.”
“And we’d really like a No 1 in the UK,” Stine adds. Surely that’s not too much to ask for the last pop group on the planet?
The Beat Is… is out now on Polydor
Rob Fitzpatrick, The Sunday Times 07-03-2010