I like happy things. Well, I like things that make me happy. I love horror movies and action and a lot of really dark things. And also I love really really good dance-pop music with pretty much no darkness whatsoever.
Which is the definition of Galantis’s excellent debut album Pharmacy.
Linus and Christian. In no particular order.
Galantis is a new side-project duo made up of producer Linus “Style of Eye” Eklow and other producer Christian “Bloodshy” Karlsson (who’s famous for working on “Toxic” by Britney Spears and for being 1/3 of Miike Snow). Their signature sound is created by using a weird but cool vocal filter that blends male and female singing together, then laying that over some of the most euphoria-inducing chords and basslines you could possibly imagine, and they’ve brought all that to the table with Pharmacy’s excellent 13 tracks.
It’s admittedly all pretty standard dance-pop stuff. The majority of the album is big, loud, and catchy electro house tunes with just enough of a Galantis twist on them to keep them from ever getting boring. “Gold Dust”, “Firebird”, and “Runaway” are a couple of examples – very piano-based jump-jump-jump tunes with an easy chorus to learn after a couple of listens. And there’s a lot of that, which is not a bad thing in Galantis’s case.
When they mix it up, though, it gets interesting. “Peanut Butter Jelly” is a lovely innuendo-laced tune full of funky, chopped-up disco samples. “Call If You Need Me” chills things out a bit and bases everything around a really cool steel drum riff. And I love “In My Head” just because it does exactly what the rest of the album does, but it has a really weird rhythm that most artists would never dare to try in a dance-pop tune.
What really makes this album shine is Galantis’s relentless commitment to smile-making music. Every song, even the slower ones or the sadder ones, is served up with just the right blend of emotions where you still feel really good. By the time the final song, “Water”, rolls around, you’re gonna want to listen to the whole thing again. Unless you’re really opposed to dance music. Or you don’t like being happy.
Pharmacy is available in stores and everywhere you get your digital music right now, so you should probably do something about that if you like your music happy. If you don’t know whether you’d like it or not, you can listen to it on YouTube or pretty much anywhere, and also check out Galantis’s self-titled debut EP for what they USED to sound like. Which is pretty much the same. Which is a good thing.
If you get the chance to see these dudes live, I’m already jealous.
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