Following on my foray into the land of Kid Rock I wanted to check out another album that I normally wouldn’t think of listening to.

My only familiarity with russian girl duo t.A.T.u. is their one claim to fame here in Norway, a 2003 cover of The Smiths’ How Soon Is Now? I’ve always thought that a good song remains a good song almost regardless of the production, and t.A.T.u. proves this with their cover. The song itself, the original, has this visceral pop feel to me, deep but catchy on the first take. Admittedly the sound on t.A.T.u.’s cover version is of the silky smooth radio friendly variety, but I think singer Yulia Volkova has an interesting voice. Somewhat smurfy sounding at times and with this undefinable incredibly well intonated in tune quality – is that an autotuner or is that how she sings? I suspect autotuner but I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt.

I don’t normally have the habit of checking out the albums of one hit wonders, but with that cover they deserve a chance. So, here goes, t.A.T.u.’s 2005 album Dangerous and Moving.

The stage is set with an album eponymous intro of less than a minute, house synth sounds, pumping electronic drums and delay guitar. Uninteresting, pointless and boring.

All right, first proper song is off, All About Us. Wow, that chorus reminds me of Gorky Park’s 80s hit “Bang”, the syncopated rhythm and that little part where the backing goes in unison with the lead vocals for two tones as a little emphasis. I suppose the chorus is catchy enough, the verse is forgotten as soon as it disappears from my headset. I wish they would have taken the ending to the symphonic extreme they seemed to be going for. Oddly abrupt ending instead. It has a certain top 10 hit quality, but has a sound that’s well past its sell-by date.

Cosmos (Outer Space) continues this so far 95% electronic album. Very stiff vocals, almost sounds like they were copied off a synth part that the song was written with or something like that. Terrible guitar part on the chorus, obviously first double stop drone they came up with that fit the 3 and a half chords of the chorus. The nasty guitar sound cuts through the thick synth layer, and not in a good way. It comes back on the verse after the first chorus with a deeper tchugga-tchugga thing and yet again later following the by now extremely boring bass synth line. I’m skipping ahead with a minute to go, I can’t take this anymore.

On Loves Me Not Volkova’s weird autotune voice makes an appearance again. It’s just too stable and too static sounding to be natural. I’m going to bet on an autotuner. Anyway, it shouldn’t make a difference if the song is good right? Shame it isn’t, a hodge podge of random synth riffs and flowing piano riffs with little repeating vocal riffs on top. And that horrible guitar is back! shame on you, guitar, now go away and let me enjoy my produced synth sounds in peace.

I suspect Friend or Foe is as raw as I’ll hear t.A.T.u. on this album, and the only thing that reminds of rawness is the ever so slightly more acoustic sounding drums and a couple extra guitar lines. Admittedly through mountains of effects, but hey, at this point I’m seeing the concrete and plastic future walls block everything around me, I’m grasping for that brave dandilion pushing through the sequenced madness.

I was wrong! Gomenasai kicks off with a piano with some dancing strings around it. There’s even an almost acoustic sounding guitar. Sucks that I can’t tell if it’s an actual acoustic guitar or a keyboard. Boring ballad, but at least you hear a bit more close up qualities of the two girl’s voices, especially on the verse. One of them has a little hoarse rasping that’s actually pretty attractive, a lot of air in that voice. Wow, the contrast between the two of them is actually pretty evident on the little bridge before the last chorus, starting at about 2:10. I’m going to guess Lena Katina on the first half and Yulia Volkova (the smurfy one) on the second. The song ends with a very superfluous instrumental synth bit, but the overall impression is not terrible. It’s not exciting or special but at least it moves in the direction of natural and more honest.

I’m going to skip Craving after just one chorus, it reminds me too much of every recent Eurovision song I’ve ever heard.

Sacrifice confirms it: the end of the chorus is inhumanly in tune seemingly so far up in her register. Autotune it is.

It continues like this for more songs, there’s very little variation on the basic formula here, so I’m going to skip ahead to the one difference I see: a song with a russian name, Obezyanka Nol. Hehehe, the euro house synth is back right before the chorus, it’s low but it’s there and it takes me 15 years back instantly to when I really detested that type of music. This song isn’t terrible though. The vocals are stiff again, I’m not wanting an over-melismatic Aguilera sound here, just a little bit more movement and a sense that the person singing is alive. The stiff vocals actually fit the line on the chorus, but I wish they had put some more emotions into the verse. The backing of this song is the worst so far, I’m not even going there. The Russian vocals adds something right away though.

Yay, the intro is back, this time in the form of a 4:36 tune. It continues with a more quiet verse starring the euro house synth in undeservedly long instrumental sections again. This is a boring song and they know it. They’ve tried to fix up the chorus with a pronounced delay effect but it’s past salvation.

I’ve arrived at the end, and it’s the second song in russian on this album, called Vsya Moya Lubov. “All my love” according to the internet. Interesting that they use the english word “Sorry” in this lyric, with distinct russian R’s. It adds some to the exotic feel of the lyrics. Sadly that’s where the exotic ends. The backing is worse than a late eighties computer game.

Sorry t.A.T.u. I kind of had a sliver of hope for you after The Smiths cover but it’s pretty apparent of this album that you’ve delivered little else but vocals (and barely that) to an overproduced album, overdone by whoever is behind the pretty faces on the covers. I’m reading on t.A.T.u’s Wikipedia page that they’re working on solo projects. That’s probably just as well, but I won’t be keeping an eye on them, this album has provided me with an overdose of sad synth productions to last me a long time. Prejudice Challenge #2: t.A.T.u. – Dangerous and Moving