You have a dilemma: you like to dance, but you also like guitars. What to do? Well, thanks to The Rapture, Cut Copy et al, danceable pop and boys with guitars are no longer mutually exclusive. Kentucky four-piece VHS Or Beta heard the news, brushed off their keyboards, and produced debut album Night On Fire.
The title track opener indeed sounds like a night on fire, the type where the sparkle of the mirror ball glances off your cheek and you can only just make out your object of lust’s face through the haze of smoke and hormones. Bass darts in and out and guitars shriek to the click clack of your red patent leather stilettos. Then it all falls away and they plead with you to ‘put your hands together and we’ll light this night on fire’, and you cannot help but oblige.
You Got Me draws you in with unashamedly ‘80s guitar lines and taut drum beats that sound like they’re straight out of a Casio keyboard. Staccato bass jolts along to the earnest intonations of a guy who is more likely than not very fond of Robert Smith and Simon Le Bon.
After such camp fun, Nightwaves whirrs on with a gurgle of guitar. Dance beats spiral in, bass bumps along, chunks of guitar bound in and out, and it all builds delightfully, but for the glaring omission of vocals. So it instead descends into a lounge tune that lingers apathetically in your head as you sip from your glass and lock eyes with The One (For Now) from across the heaving dance floor.
Thankfully VHS Or Beta find their vocal chords again with The Melting Moon, a slightly heavier but no less shoulder pad-enhanced, optimistic tune which provides another opportunity to seduce. No Cabaret! follows in much the same vein, guitars and keyboards shimmering like that turquoise sequined dress from Aunt May’s wedding back in ‘86.
Forever employs some Cher-style vocoder, so that disembodied lusty whispers of ‘forever’ drift above the dance riffs. Initially it is deliciously whipped cream lite, refreshing in the need to exert exactly zero brain cells in order to enjoy the song. However, by the end of the borderline six minutes you wonder why the frivolity had to go on for so long.
The aptly titled Alive bursts on with life-affirming pride, complete with ‘lalas’ and a shiny pink gaiety which makes you want to grab people by the hand and spin them around while laughing brightly, all Mentos advertisement-like. Yes, it is alarmingly positive, and Dynamize doesn’t do much to dissipate the choking concentration of the ‘Are You Having Fun Yet?!’ mood. Another instrumental, it bubbles and giggles like pink champagne, and your head bobs in spite of itself.
The Ocean is the breezy tune which accompanies the wearing of white leisure suits and excessively big hair, of frosted pink lipstick and opaque violet pantyhose. You feel yourself swaying to the dizzying synths – don’t be afraid to dance, shy one. Epic instrumental nine minute closer Irreversible is initially solitary, ominous guitar, but then some drums power in like a car on a freeway, and it is as alpha male as this band gets, that is, not very.
VHS Or Beta have created with Night On Fire an album to soundtrack getting ready for cheap, messy Saturday nights spent dancing and spilling drinks on suede shoes as you brush clumsily against shoulders in darkened disco halls. And it will merely soundtrack as opposed to become the focus; the ten songs, as catchy as they are, blur together, each track indiscernible from the rest. Great if you’re looking for one big party, but not if you need to pop something on to accompany that bottle of red and a night of introspection.
