Kill Rock Stars
1995
Oh Ah
About This Album
Stereo Total's 1995 debut album, Oh Ah!, re-released in 2003 by Kill Rock Stars with bonus tracks, introduces the band's shabbily glamorous, multilingual, and multi-culti mix of pop and punk more or less fully formed, albeit slightly messier than the group's later albums. Oh Ah! focuses more on the rougher side of their music, to gloriously all-over-the-place effect on the cute-but-tough punk ye-ye of "Miau Miau" and the strutting, androgynous "Comme un Garçon." However, a fair amount of time is also devoted to their wide-ranging pop, spanning the typewriter-punctuated love song "Dactylo Rock" and the quirky Europop of "C'Est la Mort" in Oh Ah!'s first two tracks alone. Despite the lovely sheen of "Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je M'En Vais," most of the album is less ambitious and polished than Stereo Total's later work, but that doesn't hamper its charms in the slightest. In fact, the cheap keyboards, fuzzy guitars, and rudimentary percussion and production only give Oh Ah! an indie immediacy and friendliness that was missing on later albums like Musique Automatique. A '50s tinge colors songs ranging from the brisk pop of "Moi Je Joue" to the lovely ballad "Morose" to the twangy "Johnny" to the Euro-punkabilly of "Souvenir Souvenir"; "À L'Amour Comme à la Guerre" is a very rough take on country.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3 and 15)

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