SELEBRITIES

Selebrities are, like last week's new band of the day Chad Valley, on Cascine, which is shaping up to join Transparent, Moshi Moshi and Neon Gold as one of the great new labels (it's a subsidiary of Service, "the leading designer behind 21st-century Swedish pop", it says here). Actually, Selebrities' music recalls the machine pop sound of a label from another era, Factory, while their arty iconography and typography, particularly as seen on the cover of new single We've Been Foolish, are highly redolent of early-80s stylishness – it could be a Paul Haig sleeve from 1982, that period just after post-punk when bands began their European glamour chase. In a nutshell, Selebrities, a three-piece from Florida via Buffalo and Brooklyn, sound like the xx playing faster disco-paced post-punk electronic pop music if it was produced by Martin Hannett and released on Belgian imprint Les Disques Du Crépuscule. The songs on their recent debut EP, Ladies Man Effect, bear this out. Secret Garden is a blur of basslines and synths, urgent but aching with regret. The female singer couldn't sound more dolorous and distracted if she tried (the point is, she sounds as though she's not trying – think of every exquisitely bored singer since Debbie Harry, notably the Clare Grogan of Altered Images' Bite). The three Selebrities might be from the States but they're clearly dreaming of Europe: the post-Kraftwerk/Bowie-Eno-in-Berlin idea of European hauteur and glamorous decadence as envisioned by Associates, early Human League, and Simple Minds circa I Travel/Theme for Great Cities. Funnily enough, it was usually Manchester, South Yorkshire or Scottish bands who longed to evoke this Europe. Selebrities are American but they have the aesthetic sense of 1982 northerners. And they're consistent with it: in terms of ambition and design, Selebrities are an immaculate conception. Another track from that Ladies Man Effect EP, The Moonlight, could have been recorded using early-80s equipment in the same way that the White Stripes used early-60s equipment to record Elephant. It recalls Factory singles including Section 25's Looking from a Hilltop, Life's Tell Me and 52nd Street's Cool As Ice, from the time when the label was being quietly revolutionary in the journey from post-punk to proto-electro. The new single, We've Been Foolish and When I Look at You, are slicker (a little more 1984-5 than 1982-3), but Audition is the gasp-inducing highlight. It may concern the desperation of 2010 reality TV wannabe starlets for all we know ("My hair is shiny, my makeup's perfect," Maria Usbeck sings) but the general atmosphere – that guitar sound! That rhythm! That voice! – are from another time, another place.