Alphabeat "Fascination" - Alphabeat's music has got very little to do with the real world. They are fantasists, and on their album, they've built a familiar and incredibly inviting alternate universe built from the scraps of teen movies, young adult novels, WB/CW tv shows, and several generations of pop hits. They're the Josh Schwartzs of Euro pop; the creators of fully aware, exquisitely crafted escapist fluff that gains its power from its sincere appreciation of the idealized artifice and simplified narratives of pop storytelling. Alphabeat pretty much spell it out for you in the lyrics of "Fascination": "Passion is our passion," "We love this exaltation," "We live on fascination." In other words, they believe in magic, and they're going to do everything they can to nudge their fantasies into reality. At the very least, they've made a nearly perfect album of songs that sound like a bright, colorful world of humor, beauty, extreme joy and drama, and the sort of sadness that can be reversed in the span of a single montage sequence. I am fat. (Click here to buy it via Alphabeat.)
― Dom Passantino, Thursday, 20 March 2008 12:32 (eighteen years ago)