The Veronicas Issue #37

Hook Me Up (Sire)

By Ian Grey
Published: September 1st, 2008 | 6:10pm

While the cool kids are enjoying the latest Tegan & Sara, the cooler ones will enjoy the new release by Australian duo, the Veronicas — the album by twin 22-year-olds Lisa and Jessica Origliasso and an A-list of teen-pop producers and co-writers — Hook Me Up offers a rich feast of OCD genre-mixing, fevered musical invention, gleeful pillaging of source materials, and an aesthetic where over-the-top is a mere starting point.

While the title of this sophomore album can suggests a plea, the disc is mainly about being pissed off. Yummy fissions abound when glossy, streamlined ultra-pop is juxtaposed with sheer, unprocessed delirium of the sisters’ tight-throated alto delivery.

Early songs skirt the issue but provide aesthetic and psychological contexts: “Untouched” is a four-minute wallflower epic powered by Psycho-soundtrack cellos, candy metal guitars, and a Casio-tone bass co-singing the hook. “Take Me On the Floor,” a great act of accidental post-modern pop neurosis with an irresistible shmoosh of Sparks-y spazz-rhythms, a partial appropriation of the melody from Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love,” and creepy background da-da-das suggestive of goth-oddity the Cranes.

Unlike the calculated bi-come-on of Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl,” “Take Me” places gender preference within the now-established context of the Origliassos’ anxiety about everything. “Revenge Is Sweeter (Than You Ever Were)” is self-explanatory. But “I Can’t Stay Away” is fascinating and effecting in the way the twins’ anger degrades into self-loathing, while the 175 BPM piss-off “This Is How It Feels” is simply exhilarating.

The fact that the Origliassos can both work and subvert genre expectations, offer such nuanced observations about hard feelings, and deliver the hyper-melodramatic goods, well, that’s really something.

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