WhoMadeWho

Touring their eponymous 2005 debut, Danish trio WhoMadeWho regularly took to the stage in skeleton outfits. Their sound was anything but stripped to the bone, combining hooky punk-funk (which saw them aligned with Hot Chip and LCD Soundsystem) with elements of techno and some clever cover versions. With the imminent release of follow-up The Plot, WhoMadeWho are ushering in the excellent skewed pop of their second album with some new costumes – hirsute singers Tomas Hoefding and Jeppe Kjellberg now inexplicably wear matching harlequin tights. In a well drilled performance, the band are confident enough to open with a new album track, the vocoder-heavy Small Town City, before batting out their best known single Space For Rent. WhoMadeWho are a hard band to pin down, too steeped in dance to be a pure pop act (their drummer records techno as Tomboy), too catholic in taste to truly rock. As such, histrionic power-chords are juxtaposed by falsetto vocal harmonics, and a slide guitar sound is achieved with a champagne flute. One element hasn’t changed from those skeleton shows: the cover versions are still Mr Oizo’s Flat Beat, which is transformed into a stomping punk rocker, and Benny Benassi’s Satisfaction. Both remain firm fan favourites, but with two albums to draw on WhoMadeWho should be confident enough with their own arsenal of undefinable magic.