VIENNA, Va., February, 13, 2012 - The Asteroids Galaxy Tour is a difficult band to describe. For one, the name of their band implies something more like a touring event or festival rather than a singular band. The nature of their sound and live performance at the Rock and Roll Hotel supported this line of thinking.
Music culture demands to a certain extent that a band be defined by some sort genre, so they can be easily categorized. The band has been classified as everything from acid jazz to psychedelic rock. None of this does a sufficient job of nailing down what the band sounds like but it doesn’t stop anyone from trying to place them.
The Asteroids Galaxy Tour subverts this notion by pretty much playing whatever they want and being essentially a straight up pop band in the process. The primary reason for this is the band hailing from Denmark. The musical world they inhabit is a bit off center to the one anyone living in the States is used to.
Trying to group the Asteroids Galaxy Tour into a genre tends to ignore that they’re a pop band with big band aesthetics. This makes them more populous than it would seem at first glance, much like a number of other quirky northern Europe bands, and why they should have a bigger audience than a place like the Rock and Roll Hotel could hold. Yet, it hasn’t quite translated to major American audience.
The thing is, despite that and the venue being filled to capacity, the band is better known than people may realize. “Around the Bend” and “The Golden Age” are arguably the band’s two most popular songs, mainly for appearing in national advertising campaigns for popular products. So, a lot more people are familiar with the band than the number who showed up at the Rock and Roll Hotel.
It makes sense why the Asteroids Galaxy Tour would let themselves be used in this context and it shows up in their live shows. They fit a lot of the trappings of a traditional pop band, but there’s a variety in their approach that isn’t seen very often. The band is unafraid to incorporate aspects of various genres.
“Around the Bend” for instance is in its basic form a pop song, but the band fits in a funk bass sound to really liven up the song. It’s a twist that isn’t necessarily unexpected after hearing the band through the night, but it’s a nice inclusion anyway.
In fact, all of their songs have interesting little variations like this. They played a number of songs off their new album “Out of Frequency” which marries psychedelic keyboards with the horn section of a big band. All of this is on top of a rhythm section that suggests a pretty strong funk background. They even manage to use a pan flute at one point.
What ends up tying the band’s sound together is the vocals of Mette Lindeberg. Her vocals are high pitched and airy, which is often more seen in a tween pop band rather than any of the genres this band is blending. Still, the pixie-like vocals further push the point the band is trying to make with its ever changing style.
It’s that eclectic mix of style which made the Asteroid Galaxy Tour so appealing to the crowd. Whether people like to admit it or not, they will always flock to a tight pop band, and the really good ones are able to subvert that pop sound into various genres in a way that sounds unique. The Asteroids Galaxy Tour does this about as well as anyone.
Stephen Bradley is an avid music listener. Read more of his work in Riffs at the Washington Times Communities.
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