free music friday: sally shapiro

Sally Shapiro isn’t your typical synth-pop diva. ‘She’ is in fact two people: a notoriously private, unnamed female singer and producer Jonas Agebjörn. The duo’s flooringly nostalgic take on disco, pulsed through an Italo filter, caused an outbreak of unanimous praise in 2006 when it first became apparent that something very special was happening in Sweden. The debut album Disco Romance was a word of mouth triumph and was swiftly followed by two equally inviting remix projects featuring such sought-after names as Dntel, Lindstrøm, Holy Fuck and The Juan MacLean. On the evidence of ‘Miracle’, disco fever could go to pandemic level in August when Sally’s second album proper, My Guilty Pleasure, is released through Paper Bag Records. In an unusual move, the duo have made the album version available for free download and will release a longer version as a single on June 16th. “This is the way Pet Shop Boys did it with ‘Being Boring’ so it can’t be wrong,” Sally reasons cutely in her Myspace blog.

‘Miracle’ find the disco recluse yearning for a flash-in-the-pan French lover – “It’s the start of…One of those letters where you write ‘It’s not that I want to bring us back together’ even though that’s what you want…” – and is as melodically lovely as anything on the debut. Reprising a trick she used on Disco Romance’s ‘Time To Let Go’, the song starts out with some whispered French before the retro snare and layered synths kick in to push towards the fantastically catchy chorus. The surprisingly effective addition of rolling thunderstorm sounds is a brilliant (if not exactly original) touch, proving that while the duo have no doubt upped the sophistication of their songwriting and production (with help from co-writer Roger Gunnarsson), the childlike innocence that marked their debut out as something special has not been lost.

FREE MP3: Sally Shapiro, ‘Miracle’ [via Pitchfork]

visit Sally on Myspace / follow her on Twitter

Written by: Alan Pedder

Tags: my guilty pleasure, sally shapiro

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 10th, 2009 at 11:38 am and is filed under All A/V, free music friday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.