Ok. La Casa Azul are one of the finest bands to come out of Spain ever-simply perfecta! Also one of the oddest. What you see is not quite what they are. Is it just a boy or is it five groovy singers who look like they came from the Spanish version of The Brady Brunch? Very cute and extremely addictive-they are pop but, Jim its not as we know it. Let me talk about the music. The sound is an amazing and unique elasticated and refined pop music of the 1960s, '70's and disco of the early 80's. Their mode of pop is dripping in sugary sweetness but don't let your mind immediately jump to the likes of Steps and A*Teens. This project is quite far removed from such ventures. The albums contain shameless disco claps, flutes that shimmy into the sky and midi-synths which cruise into vocoders like two flower powered lovers grinding to a halt somewhere in the Castro district of San Francisco.
Engineered & produced by one of the sublimest name in pop Guille Milkyway, La Casa Azul enrich their sound with the surf-sands of The Beach Boys, ABBA and of course the Electric Light Orchestra. Dusty Springfield would dance to them if they were around back in the day. The sound effects are glorious, chirpy and you almost feel like you've walked into a shagadelic club on the right side of Paris with Andy Warhol pouting to the left and Dionne Warwick dancing to the right.Lets take a look at them. Take their brilliant about their video for Superguay (the song itself a tribute to Petula Clark and early disco). You don't have to understand a word of Spanish to love everything about the single/video. The disco beats of the themes of Dallas and Charlies Angles mixed in with the chimes of I will Survive.
They bring out the obvious Brady Bunch influence on their video for "Como un Fan". The song itself is simply a dedication to the 70's but wait to the end. It goes all vocoder-ish. I adore it:
The production have managed to squeeze the best of pop music of the last forty years into just a few minutes. For this La Casa Azul must be celebrated. In their latest video, La Revolocion Sexual they refer to Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Buck Rodgers. As you can see, the band become robots & chaos ensues on the sci-fi dancefloor.
The song has edited and been picked by the band to represent this years Eurovision for Spain and I think it has a fighting chance (you can hear the new version on their myspace). Its in the pre-selection and will make Spain proud if sent to Serbia. The lovely people at their record company Elefant & La Casa Azul have allowed Dontstopthepop a rather exclusive legal download of Esta noche sólo cantan para mi. Its a mixture between Kylie's Disco Down and The Boss. It even quotes Elton John, discopop and northern soul. I hope you like! I can imagine this band as being huge this year (albeit if they recorded some of the songs in English). The band are everything that is right with the Spanish pop industry.
