So, the director of the forthcoming t.A.T.u. film used to work on Coronation Street. Perfect.
It’s a good Fall for music: I like the Sugababes album (though it does seem a little mean of them to have stolen Mutya’s idea of making a northern soul record), and I’m obviously eagerly anticipating the new Britney and Girls Aloud records that are on their way. Meanwhile, the Russian version of the new t.A.T.u. album is out, and I fear I’m a little underwhelmed, although I have enjoyed transliterating the song titles. The previously released tracks, “Белый Плащик” is fairly good and “220” is extremely good. Other tracks show promise, such as “Снегопады,” which starts fairly well, and has what sounds like a rather good bridge, which unfortunately fails in one crucial aspect, because the song doesn’t have a chorus for it to lead in to. On the whole, though, I don’t find myself being grabbed by the album as much as I would have expected; perhaps it’s just the estrangement effect of it being in Russian. A friend of mine suggested I learn Russian, to test that theory.
There is, though, one significant exception to this indifference: “Fly on the Wall” is absolutely fantastic. All the elements of the song work together perfectly: the tense build-up of the verse spills over into the psycho-sexual bass rumblings of the chorus; better still, the industrial clanking of the drums suggests a social context for the whole thing.