Kate Boy
One
Release Date: Nov 6, 2015
Genre(s): Pop/Rock
Record label: Fiction
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Album Review: One by Kate Boy
Very Good, Based on 4 Critics
Based on rating 3.5
Kate Boy, a Swedish/Aussie outfit, are the latest electropop artist to come from the Nordic lands with a substantial amount of hype behind them, enough to convince Fiction to sign them up. They’ve made their reputation on big, anthemic songs that are solid as a rock and impenetrable – the world’s first taster came a few years ago with Northern Lights and In Your Eyes. After a series of further singles and EPs, along comes One, their extremely long-awaited debut LP.
Based on rating 7/10
In another universe, Kate Boy could have occupied the space currently reserved on alt-rock radio and in festival lineups for CHVRCHES. Another blacklit synth-pop now-duo, the Stockholm-based Kate Boy announced their arrival with 2012’s thunderous “Northern Lights” around the same time CHVRCHES debuted with “The Mother We Share” — both sounding delicately chiseled out of the frosty shadow-sonics of the Knife, and then gratifyingly blown up to arena-rock proportions. But the Scottish trio built on their momentum with a quick series of similarly panoramic blasts, and collected them cohesively on their rapturously received first LP, The Bones of What You Believe, within 12 months of their on-record debut.
Based on rating 6.9/10
When it came out three years ago, Kate Boy's "Northern Lights" joined a new, growing class of Knife-wielding groups. Purity Ring, Chvrches, and Niki and the Dove all made debuts that year that recast the Swedish duo's roiling, synth-heavy formula into new electropop oddities. But the strutting "Northern Lights" stood out for a number of reasons: Those teeming, plasticized synth melodies; that widescreen, euphoric chorus; the promise that "everything we touch turns to gold" that on repeat listens sounded more and more like a threat.
Opinion: Excellent
?Swedish/Australian trio Kate Boy are not ones to rush into anything. A glacial, methodical creative process is the name of the game, and it’s the reason why their debut album is only just coming out, some three years since we first heard the cries of “Everything we touch / it turns to gold” on “Northern Lights”. One is the result of years of fine tuning their sound and making sure absolutely everything hits the mark.
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