DAMAGED GOODS RECORDS 27th September 2024
A phenomenally exciting live act, the Danish-Brazilian husband-wife duo of The Fabulous Courettes are massive sixties fans and produce songs in the spirit of Sixties Beat music but made for modern sensibilities. With this, their fourth album, they have deepened the songwriting but stuck with big beaty garage rock fused with girl group heartache and doo-wop harmonies.
Drummer Martin Couri provides a big Motown-influenced beat while guitarist Flavia Couri provides most of the vocals. As it’s an album, the duo have drafted in a few other people to flesh things out in their search for a Spectoresque wall of sound. They managed to get La La Brooks of The Crystals on ‘California’ and ‘Run Run Away’, which have a classic sun-warmed sound. It helped that those two tracks were produced by one of the crew from Brian Wilson’s ‘Smile!’ sessions. There are horns on a few songs, which adds even more punch with organ and mellotron adding texture too
There is a theme of working to a soul sound (the clue’s in the name…..) and it makes for a rewarding pop-rock-soul album. There’s old and new, with songs like ‘You Woo Me’ and ‘Shake’ having stabbing rhythms that could have been on a previous set, while ‘Wall Of Pain’ has a classic Motown sound to the beats. ‘Boom Boom Boom’ veers to the message song, turning sweetly around a Shangri-Las style farewell to a flung-away lover (well, what’s a girl to do when their heart goes “boom, boom, boom out of their chest”?). Even the angry songs, like ‘Better Without You’ are joyous dancers, twisting and swinging energetically or big thumping anthemic choruses like ‘Stop! Doing That’
‘I Don’t Want You Back’ and ‘Keep Dancing’ are a departure in being serious and personal (though one is a classic ballad, the other rocks hard and both are as cutting as can be). Both are about Flavia’s father, his neglect, absence and death. “It’s a special subject to sing about and to make pop music out of,” says Martin. “It’s actually celebrating moving on.” Having experienced the Trashmen-meet-the-Shangrilas sound of the duo live, this is a new approach and thinking about the process of moving a step on from the last album (‘Back To Mono’), Flavia comments “We always try to put ourselves into a zone of discomfort, which I think is where exciting things happen rather than just doing the same thing over again.” It’s certainly worked here, with emotionally affecting songs, some classic themes and a big new sound.
We saw the band last year: