Yahoo! Music Review

Gig played on 10/12/08

With the non-ironic reanimation of all things 1980s and people's unending, pitying affection for that perennial cliché of the clueless Yank dimwit - from "Dude, Where's My Car?" to Kid Rock and "My Name Is Earl" - there probably would have always been a place for California's Iglu & Hartly. Though that's not to say they don't remain an entirely jarring proposition.

They're like Bill & Ted sacking off "Bohemian Rhapsody" to mimic MC Hammer's "Can't Touch This" dance, or Beavis & Butthead in rainbow t-shirts, singing along in the stands at a Frankie Goes To Hollywood concert. They're crossed wires in nostalgia's cultural fuse-box and they really shouldn't work. But where there is slapdash wiring there are sparks and if there's one thing this band is not short of it's energy, so they do have the potential to electrify.

"Jump Out Of Your Car" hot-wires their post-Scissor Sisters/Bloodhound Gang-minus-the-gags hybrid and flies by in a parody-gagging haze of bouncing limbs and testosterone. So far so Jane Fonda work-out; all synthetic motivator beats, tank-tops and rhymes exchanged like a hi-NRG lycra ping pong duel. "Believe" quickly follows, gabbled in the same quasi-rap morse-code and canny enough to weld on an anthemic chorus. Despite having only a couple of big hitters, it's a formula that carries them through to the end of the set when they can finally roll out the singles.

Larger than life is the aim - presumably something frontman Jarvis Anderson tries to exaggerate by playing his keyboard at knee height - but that works against them as they repeatedly attempt to assert their heterosexuality. Inviting the "hottest chick" or seven onstage for "Out There" ( "C'mon, baby", Anderson beckons) just feels grubby and clichéd, but you can't help but suspect the charade is all to momentarily distract from the song being a flat copy of single "In This City", which follows as if to prove the point.

Their narrow style is incessant and does wear thin before long. The kind of middle-eight rap interludes so favoured by late-'80s and '90s pop (think Paula Abdul's "Opposites Attract"), are strung out to whole tracks and those songs arrive like pop-up parties in a box, Anderson and side-kick Sam Martin zipping around the stage in repeated unison as if to ensure each tune has a calorific burn factor, while guitarist Simon Katz gives it some good, cocky Spinal Tap to ensure things stay ridiculous. Which is fine, for a while, but ultimately Iglu & Hartly can really only ever be as 2-D as that pop-up party.

by James Berry