Austin Lace - Pop delights from Belgium

With "Easy To Cook", recently reissued by the Italian label Homespleep, Belgium's Austin Lace are emerging as one of the most compelling new names on the euro-pop scene. We met Enzo Porta and Fabrice Detry, respectively the electronic manipulator and singer-guitarist of the Walloon band

by Marco Bercella, Matteo Lavagna

The biography of Austin Lace tells of a group of Belgian lads who met by chance on a seaside holiday in the summer of 1997, and from there set off on a musical adventure marked by a carefree, unburdened lightness that, after an already promising debut which nonetheless passed almost unnoticed (Commodore Pace, 2000), flows in full into Easy To Cook, their second effort, providentially released by the very Italian Homesleep.

What holds the twelve songs together is an indie-pop sound built on crystalline melodies, often streaked with electronic arrangements, steeped in gentle introspection, playful sonic conversations wrapped in a faint melancholy soaked up in the sun, with the breeze scattering thoughts in every direction.

With Easy To Cook, Austin Lace give us sweet flavours garnished with multicoloured beads, little songs that never tip over into mere jingles, childlike games played along the imperceptible line that separates lightness from banality, nostalgia from sadness, good cheer from unbridled joy, always staying on the right side of it, never straying into the crowded wasteland of the obvious.

There are plenty of guests on Austin Lace's beach: from Eels in the intro of the opening "Come On, Come On, Come On", which then disguises itself as Xtc in the chorus, to China Crisis, who on "Bossanova" reshape themselves in the image of Matt Bianco, but also, why not, drawing on the ironic, green-and-yellow winks of a vintage Sergio Caputo. And yet none of these references ever manages to take the wheel, which stays firmly in the hands of Austin Lace from first note to last, thickening twee moods into choruses that swirl like confetti in the wind, brushing against the surfboards of the Beach Boys ("Say Goodbye"), coining unplugged versions of the playful-era Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark ("Cream On My Arms"), or teasing us with jazzy little marches whose orchestral openings brazenly quote the slightly dazed Beatles of "Sgt. Pepper's" ("Accidentaly Yours"). Further sixties yearnings vibrate in the acid-tinged backing vocals of "Telepheric Love", which, after dragging us back to bygone times, drops us right back into the present with a sudden switch to electric guitar at the close, just in time to engage the autopilot of the single "Kill The Bee", which opens with an unusual micro-techno pairing propping up the acoustic arpeggios of a thoroughly graceful six-string.

A special mention goes to "Wax", already released on an EP, which to our mind is the best track of the bunch, a genuine pop gem fit for any year-end playlist, with its Prefab Sprout-style arrangements woven around a whispered, yearning vocal: a convertible ride down the road to the sea, at sunset.

Needless to say, dear and fortunate travellers to exotic destinations: whether it's an iPod or a portable player, don't let your beauty case go without the ever so light company of Easy To Cook as well.