Anglo-Canadian four-piece Dragonette follow up their eponymous 2005 EP with what has been hailed as a “dirty, electro-pop monster”. Well, what would you expect from a band whose name was chosen because it reminds them of a “dragon with stilettos”?
Lead singer Martina Sorbara (whose husband Dan Kurtz is also in the band) is the main attraction. The daughter of Canadian Minister for Finance, Greg Sorbara, she could instead be the middle sister of Gwen Stefani and Alison Goldfrapp, delivering lyrics like “Yeah, I get a little crazy with the razor blades/Go on and call your mama if you need a band aid” ('Take It Like A Man') as if they’re made of half-melted chocolate. Her coy, kitten-ish purr makes her the perfect tour-guide for the world they create on this album – a world just down the street from the set of Party Monster. At their best, they nail the sound The Bravery have been trying to make all these years. The marriage between electro and rock has never been so harmonious as on the penultimate track here, ‘You Please Me’.
Of course, not all of it works. Take the polish off ‘Jesus Doesn’t Love Me’ and ‘Gold Rush’, and you could be listening to B-52s and Duran Duran albums, respectively.
Should-be hit ‘Take It Like A Man’, though, more than compensates for these minor slips. It’s one of those songs so packed with brilliance that it defies physics: a bridge so exhilarating it could’ve been a chorus, a chorus so cartwheeling it could’ve been a gymnast, and an arpeggiated keyboard solo so purpose-built for a whoopalong at a concert that it surpasses Franz Ferdinand’s ‘Do You Want To’. Purr-fect.