Simply irresistible

David Macklovitch (Dave 1), left, and Patrick Gemayel (Pee-Thugg) make up the Montreal electro duo Chromeo. (Qarim Brown/Last Gang Records)

Your initiation into pop music can be a profound, life-altering experience. In the case of David Macklovitch, one half of Montreal duo Chromeo, it had the quality of a first crush.

“I got my first erection [watching] David Lee Roth’s California Girls video,” he blurts over the phone from London, England, during a recent tour stop. “Do you remember Video Hits? I grew up watching that. I’m 28 now. You do the math; that was an impressionable age for me. Watching those videos really shaped my manhood. When I saw Billy Ocean’s Caribbean Queen, I wanted to be a white version of him. When I saw Huey Lewis, I wanted to be him.”

Patrick Gemayel, the other half of Chromeo, says his own cultural awakening was less hormonal. He remembers the first time he heard Michael’s Jackson’s Bad in the late ’80s; as a youngster living in Lebanon, the song symbolized the allure of Western culture. “To me, Michael Jackson was America, like Coca-Cola,” he says.

These revelatory moments have had a great bearing on Chromeo. Their sleek, sensual ’80s sound has blown up in dance clubs worldwide, popped up in television commercials (for Heineken and McDonald’s) and kept Macklovitch (aka Dave 1) and Gemayel (aka Pee-Thugg) busy with remixes — most recently, of Feist’s Sea Lion Woman.

Growing up in Montreal, Macklovitch and Gemayel — who moved there when he was eight — spent their youth amassing great record collections of pop, funk and hip-hop. They started producing tracks for Montreal acts like Bran Van 3000 and Dubmatique, eventually minting their own rap label, Audio Research. (Macklovitch’s younger brother is Alain Macklovitch, a.k.a. world-renowned turntable whiz A-Trak, who is currently touring with rapper Kanye West.) In 2000, fellow Montreal producer Tiga pushed them to cut a demo for his label, Turbo Recordings. They did, and were signed immediately.

With its rubbery bass lines, fizzy synths, crisp rhythm guitars and the inimitable squawk of a talk box, Chromeo’s first album, She’s in Control (2004), demonstrated the duo’s studio savvy; songs like You’re So Gangsta, Needy Girl and Me and My Man showcased their melodic flair. Fancy Footwork, their new album, takes their production prowess one step further.

(Last Gang Records)

“We wanted to have a slicker approach to the music — cleaner, more like Quincy Jones,” says Gemayel, who largely handles the instrumental side of things. (He has a personal collection of more than 20 vintage synthesizers.) “Our first album was a bit lo-fi; it was very raw. The second one, we wanted to go all out, clean and reverb everywhere, a real pop production.” The process took three years, mainly because Macklovitch spends so much time in New York, where he’s studying French literature at Columbia University.

While there is no scarcity of ’80s-infatuated bands — Toronto’s MSTRKRFT and Edmonton’s Shout Out Out Out Out spring immediately to mind — Chromeo operates with an irresistible cheekiness. Just don’t mistake it for mockery.

“Humour is not synonymous with irony,” Macklovitch insists. “When you do a satire of something, or when you do a parody or pastiche, there’s usually an underlying criticism. When you do humour, there’s not. It can be funny, and not have this underlying contempt.”

Chromeo definitely remains on the side of humour, largely through sly, calculated instrumentation; the wit is in the production. It’s there in the splicing of Macklovitch’s voice, as well as Gemayel’s talk box, which makes all vocals sound robotic. Of all Chromeo’s tricks, my favourite is their crafty rhythms. The beat to their 2004 song Me and My Man features a cheeky two-stroke drum fill that seems deliberately off. It ruffles the beat without compromising it, and it never fails to amuse me.

“Listen, we’re musicians,” Macklovitch says. “When a saxophonist comes in and lays down a sax solo, we have tears in our eyes — that’s mad funny to us. But at the same time, it’s fresh. I kind of play drums, and I know what fills are funny. I’m a big Phil Collins fan, so I know what fills are funny.”

Macklovitch claims that Robert Palmer’s Simply Irresistible was another “hard-on moment” for him, and a palpable influence on Fancy Footwork. Gemayel elaborates: “[Palmer] was a funky white boy. He had some great funky songs, but he sang it straight, kind of cold — it’s a great contrast.”

The spirit of Robert Palmer also seems to inform Fancy Footwork’s cover art, which features Macklovitch and Gemayel standing behind keyboards, both of which have been retrofitted with women’s legs. The image is risqué and in questionable taste, but it speaks to the band’s lack of indie seriousness. There’s no room for posturing in Chromeo’s world; movement — preferably sexy — is all that matters. Macklovitch sums up the philosophy in Tenderoni, when he buzzes, “For sure if I tell you how to do my dance/baby, then you’ll let me get in those pants.” While the sentiment is as old as courtship itself, Macklovitch contends that his lyrics are part of a tradition celebrated in the ’80s — let’s call it brazen sensitivity.

“You can’t really say anything against A-ha or Purple Rain or Thriller. These were very progressive artists,” Macklovitch says. “At the same time, the lyrics were very macho and very vulnerable. That’s a tight balance we try to rock with.”

Chromeo plays Ottawa on July 10, Toronto on July 11, Montreal on July 12, Edmonton on July 16, Calgary on July 17 and Vancouver on July 19.

Andre Mayer writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

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