Real Life Is No Cool

There are impressive experimental excursions here, too: take Never Say Never, a whirl of backwards beats, twinkling harps and discombobulated vocals that’s both utterly disorientating and quite delightful.

Once the shock of the new dissipates, what’s left is an impeccably assembled record worth indulging with the vigor that any of Lindstrom’s Christabelle-less work deserves.

We have instead been blessed with an embraceable record from a contemporary dance music auteur and a partner who proves a skilful wingwoman.

Front-to-back, Real Life Is No Cool does exactly what it set out to do and no more: be a collection of dance pop tunes so solid it feels like they’ve always been there.

Real Life Is No Cool inhabits a place where pop, electro, house, funk and disco collide, and the results are accomplished, stylish and, above all, fun.

That’s not to say it’s not a very promising album taken as a whole, and its clear that the two work well together. A little more consistency in their focus and less pointlessly meandering distraction could really see them do justice to their own talents and produce something truly classic.

It turns out that while he’s been working on these absurdly long stoner dance tracks, he’s also been holed up in the studio with vocalist Christabelle working on this amazing album of more concise material.

Real Life is No Cool is a tasteful take on the edgier side of ’80s pop radio--like the lucid oddities of Kate Bush—but with a dash of classic soul.

Real Life Is No Cool isn't just the achingly stylish and neatly accessible dance record to end all that, it also constitutes a fresh new take on the strand of retro-futurism that Lindstrøm helped create.

Real Life Is No Cool is essentially all pop structures. It's maybe an accident that Lindstrøm and Christabelle's project so successfully feels like something hip and modern, like a photograph hung in a museum or cut from an obscure magazine that's suddenly become part of the landscape.

Real Life Is No Cool is a creamy, luscious sequence of classically structured pop-funk tracks glittering with Lindstrøm's trademark brand of space dust. Formally, the work here is light years away from the proggier, more sprawling galaxies he's recently navigated; Christabelle's languid yet charismatic, definitive yet hazy vocals are given properly emphatic productions.

The Moroder-indebted tunes on Real Life are more pop-friendly, but the chopped-up vocal samples on opener "Looking for What" are guaranteed to meld minds, while airy centerpiece "Keep It Up" defies gravity via handclaps and delicately chiming bells.

The result is an album that squeezes a lot of air and atmosphere into songs that take no more time to make their point than Nu Shooz’ “I Can’t Wait.”

The result potently distils what makes him a great producer--as demonstrated by "Music in My Mind" and "So Much Fun," his take on 1980s funk-pop is exhilaratingly woozy, psychedelic and strange, never sliding into retro pastiche.

It can feel facile, this emulation. In a longer form Lindstrom lets his allusions bubble up as if from the depths of a lake. Here they skitter across the surface.

Real Life... is a triumphant return to the dancefloor. [Feb 2010, p.90]

The Norwegian maestro of disco, Hans-Peter Lindstrøm, teams up again with Christabelle (also known as Solale), and together they craft a masterful 10-song pop album.