Manda Rin – My DNA

I liked Bis. There, I said it. They were fun and poppy and probably before their time in a funny sort of way, what with all this new rave and patterned hoody malarkey going on. There are a lot of people out there who have an irrational hatred for all things Bis, but I am not one of them, no sir. However, that said... My DNA is really, really shit. Take the squeaky voice of Bis singer Manda Rin, take away all semblance of musical verve the other two members of the band had, and replace it with a load of really bad eighties ideas that have been copied by someone with no discernable musicianship instead of being built upon, and you have My DNA (well hers, not mine, thank god). And what makes things worse is that, as well as liking Bis, I like eighties synth pop too. I’m never happier (OK, that’s a lie) that when I’m listening to early Duran Duran or Depeche Mode. I’ll happily sing along with Kim Wilde and Blondie, dancing around the room. But what Manda Rin manages to produce here are songs that ape these artists without ever nearing the heights they scaled 25 years ago. In fact they pretty much scrape the bottom of the barrel. What’s worse is hearing this twaddle mentioned in the same breath as the likes of CSS and Lykke Li. While there are certain vague similarities ”“ pianos with plugs, birds with microphones ”“ the similarities end there. There is more imagination in any eight bars of those artists than on the whole of My DNA. The final insult is her description of this monstrosity as ‘disco punk’. Oh do fuck off. If you remember, disco and synth pop lived alongside each other. This is very poor synth pop with beats. And punk? Taken to mean ‘can’t play our instruments’ then yeah, maybe. If you take it as singing out of key then yup, OK, you have a point. However, if you mean edgy, challenging, or likely to make your heartbeat race, even for a second, then not a chance. This is less punk than Captain Sensible on Happy Talk. Monotonous, unimaginative keyboard crap would fit the bill, I think. The lyrics do touch on the odd taboo topic, but its barely riot grrl levels, let alone Crass. I’m not going to do this the service of listing any tracks and picking them to bits one by one; it has already wasted more of my time, and yours, than is deserved. Now where’s that Kim Wilde album? 28%Manda Rin on Myspace