Music
Press
“probably the best album of 2007…. No other album in recent memory has been so resilient and so persistently listenable over such a long period of time. It's difficult to recall a single day in the last six months we haven't listened to it, or at least bits of it.” - popjustice
"Songs packed with life, love and sex. They are what No Doubt would have sounded like had they continued the trajectory of their last album, or what Scissor Sisters would sound like had they continued the trajectory of their first." - Observer Music Monthly
“our favorite new band. They're a little bit nu wave, a sprinkle of pop, a dash of electro and just totally rad. We LOVE!" - Perez Hilton
“a powerful Brit-inspired new wave sound, blending punchy electro grooves with sensational pop melodies in stunningly effective fashion” - Sunday Mail
"smart, sassy state-of-the-art pop… which simply demands to be heard with no waiting around."
- the Independent
Discography
ALBUMS:
2005 - Dragonette
2007 - Galore
2009 - Fixin to Thrill
SINGLES
2007 - "I Get Around"
2007 - "Take It Like a Man"
Photos
Bio
DRAGONETTE BIO
Dragonettes sophomore album, Fixin To Thrill, takes the playful, campy, provocative electro rock-disco-cabaret-pop explored on its 2007 full-length, Galore, and arrives at a more defining sound, as heard on the lead single and title track. The album might veer into different directions, hinting at country on the sparking hoedown Gone Too Far or the clip-clop beat of the gentle Easy, but thats the fun of this hyphen-worthy UK/Toronto band.
Theres the melodic pop-rock of Pick Up The Phone, a song about falling out with a close friend, and the acoustic folk to mounting carnival-key creepiness of Youre A Disaster. Stupid Grin comes complete with a chorus of people, age 9 & up, and Funny Stuff is cabaret-swing uber-cool.
Since the release of Galore and singles Take It Like A Man and I Get Around, Dragonette has taken control of its career, remaining on Universal Music in Canada but now independent for the rest of the world. This allowed the band, which includes drummer Joel Stouffer and guitarist Chris Hugget, to work at its own pace, pushing and developing the sound it started on its 2005 indie EP.
Writing began in Barcelona, Spain, where Martina and Dan escaped to woodshed. Thats when we started grinding away, says Martina. We rented a little apartment there. Its hard to work being in such as awesome place as Barcelona. We started two or three songs that are on the record. Were not the most prolific people in the world so that was pretty good for us.
The kick-off songs were Get Your TTs Off and Stupid Grin. Lets address TTs. Yes, TTs means titties, and Dragonette knows yawn this groovy song will probably get attention just for the title, but how else to express getting some girl to back off your man? Do you say, Please?
Obviously, I am who I am, says Martina, and sometimes I write a theme of a song because I think its a funny thing to put into a song. Like get your titties off my things was a real sentiment I had get your titties off my property (laughs). So, sometimes I think, Isnt it fun or funny or interesting to put things into a song in that language? but I guess sometimes people look at it one-dimensionally. Ive always been blunt in terms of the language I use
Fixin To Thrill, the rockin title track and first single, was written as a call-out to Dragonette concertgoers from across theglobe - the U.K., Europe, North America and Australia, even Santiago, Chile, and Sao Paulo, Brazil, where they discovered they had a dedicated audience singing all the words even though Galore hadnt been released there. Get on the floor/Dont make a fuss/Just do it, she sings. Its just wanting the audience to be on the same page as you, Martina explains.
Self-produced by Martina, Dan, and another Dan, their friend Dan Grech-Marguerat, under their new production team moniker Black Wrappers, the tracks usually started by Martina and Dan working on the core of the song, then Joel fills out the drums (initially using a music program), then the final product takes shape in the studio. Its more about building a song than demoing, they say.
We actually set out trying to be less over the top than we were with Galore in terms of instrumentation, and then it kind of got away from us a bit, in some cases, like, Oh yeah, cool, banjo! says Dan of Gone Too Far. And the kids choir [on Stupid Grin] was just because we stacked a bunch of Martina and her friends singing those back-up lines, and we were like, Thats a lot of Martina singing against everyone. Lets get a bunch of other people to do it. The only other people we could think of was our neices and nephews. Those kids actually appear in our video for Fixin To Thrill. But the one cool thing is, with the exception of those kids, this whole record was made for us by us, in our shitty little studio.
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