For those of us still missing the easy-on-the-ears melodic rock of the infuriatingly likable Phoenix, the Rouen-based Tahiti 80’s newest album, Activity Center, might just be a godsend, especially since Phoenix’s most recently (unofficially) released track, Twenty-One One Zero, turned out to be so, umm, unPhoenix-like. But isn’t that a rather lazy comparison, because they’re both a bunch of French dudes who lyricise in English and produce that lovely soft garage sound which is so accessible your mum will hear it in David Jones one time and resolve to Google it when she gets home, or similarly make a blind kitten smile to itself despite the fact that it instinctively knows it will face great difficulties surviving past the age of eleven months, I hear you ask? Probably. Who else do they sound like then? I don’t know, stop asking so many questions! Get out of my house!

They might have been releasing material since 1996, but Tahiti 80 seem to have made a career out of flying under the radar, but then, when you’re as big in Japan as they appear to be, the rest doesn’t really matter anyway. Accordingly, they released Activity Center in Japan on the 10th of September, followed by the French release on the 22nd via Universal/Atmosphériques. Visit their official site, or Myspace page, to pick up a copy.

Tahiti 80 – Brazil

Tahiti 80 – Tune In

And they might be old, but they didn’t receive nearly enough attention the first time round:

Tahiti 80 – All Around (Yuksek Remix)

Simian Mobile Disco – Here Comes (Tahiti 80 Remix)

- bec