AK Momo Return to N.Y.

Return to N.Y. is junk-shop exotica that succeeds, in spite of a strategy that inches too close to novelty. AK Momo's debut was recorded with obsolete sample-playback technology such as the Mellotron and, rather less conventionally, the Optigan—a keyboard marketed by the Mattel toy company in the early '70s that uses clear vinyl discs to store sampled sounds. Mercifully, the curiosity value is quickly superseded by the album's other virtues. Among these would be AK von Malmborg's girlish but never twee vocals. She's usually compared to Kate Bush or Joanne Newsome, though Marta Jaciubek from Vancouver's own Girl Nobody also springs to mind. The Girl Nobody comparison could also extend to AK Momo's pop smarts: the Swedish duo is too unambiguously sunny to really merit the more insistent comparisons to trip-hoppers Goldfrapp. If anything, breezy album opener "Greasy Spoon" has the same undeniable, summertime frisson as St. Etienne's transcendent exercises in easy-listening pop. "World Traveller" also conjures images of a sun-dappled London in the '60s, while "Your Mother's Faith" chucks Martin Denny-esque birdcalls into the mix. Dark album closer "Boys & Girls" really throws AK Momo's achievement into relief, being the one time the band relies on the otherworldliness of its forgotten contraptions, and the funereal sounds they emit, to produce something macabre and unsettling. Everything else refreshes like a lemon Popsicle.

Georgia Straight, May 2005