Operator PleaseGlovesReview

Back in 2007 Australia’s Operator Please had a stab at being the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Their effervescent punk pop single Just a Song About Ping Pong (which it certainly was) divided critics and fans between those who heard a subway-rhythm alt-pop classic and those who felt they were being beaten repeatedly around the head with a sped-up Gossip album. Sadly the band’s debut album Yes Yes Vindictive failed to throw out any further potential hits to help clarify the matter, so it’s to Gloves that we turn to learn whether Karen O needs to lose any sleep over the breath of OP’s Amandah Wilkinson on her neck.

The nays have it. Ironically released the week of Eurovision, Gloves ditches all pretence of garage grit in order to grasp at mainstream pop success. Opener Catapult attempts to bridge the gap with funk-punk basslines and slashes of the 80s synths that all bands were legally obliged to include on every album released in 2009, but it’s an inadequate smoke-screen. Amandah’s vocals are glossed and polished to the point of resembling ex-Go-Go’s poppet Jane Wiedlin, and indeed the album-wide likeness to Wiedlin’s 1988 hit Rush Hour doesn’t end there. This is undoubtedly a record that dreams of riding to the top of the charts on the back of a disgruntled dolphin.

Unfortunately Gloves simply isn’t as chart-worthy as it thinks it is. Logic features Madonna/Jacko disco funk and a hook they must have paid Derren Brown to steal out of La Roux’s subconscious, yet reads a lot better than it actually sounds. Back and Forth smacks of Voice of the Beehive B sides and Volcanic is as thick and cloying as an ash cloud – a Toni Basil/Ting Tings skipping song only saved by a burst of pummelling Delphic electro for a chorus. Sonically Gloves is as slick and anodyne as the lyrics; the romantic jealousies and insecurities dissected here are so dull and distant you’ll wish they’d stuck to commentating on table tennis in song.

Music this varnished exposes every flaw in the quality of the tunes, and this is predominantly where Gloves fails to measure up. The hooks are blunt, the melodies virtually non-stick, the choruses coated in a glistening pop grease that make them impossible to grasp. A shame – Operator Please turned out to be this generation’s Meh Meh Mehs.