Alpaca Sports - 'Just For Fun' from 'Just For Fun' 7"
Alpaca Sports - 'She'll Come Back For Indian Summer' from download single
Alpaca Sports - ‘I Was Running’ from ‘I Was Running’ 7”
What’s that you say? Pick just one Alpaca Sports song for the Unpopular advent?! Mais, c’est impossible!
Of all the music that was new to me in 2012, Göteborg’s Alpaca Sports were surely the ones who moved me the most; the ones who made me smile so wryly and shyly; the ones who made my heart spin and my head explode.
In case you didn’t already know, Alpaca Sports make the most sublime bubblegum indiepop. It is so difficult to do that so well, so easy to do it so badly. Witness any number of faceless and nameless groups of hapless chancers and charmless dancers. Girl meets boy, so what? indeed.
So why Alpaca Sports? Well I could nod to reference points that should make you swoon: The Field Mice, The Wake, Pastels, Brilliant Corners, Harvey Williams, ‘A Swedish Love Story’ but that would tell only the superficial, obvious story and as mentioned already, there are plenty who you could point to as making such a mess with the self-same touch-stones. I could tell you that they dress so sharp, that they look so young and charming and would break your heart in dufflecoats and summer dresses. I could tell you that they had heartwarming hand-claps and ‘ba-ba-ba’s’ and that they had tambourines tattooed over their tattered hearts.
I could tell you all those things and then write copious words on how important all those connections and puzzle pieces are. Yet in the end and in truth they matter not in the slightest. Because this is what the best Pop always does - it leaves us breathless and euphoric, exhausted and emotional. It does it without thinking, without resort to reason or to meaning. It just is. It just does.
Long may it continue.
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