Breaking on U.S. shores hot on the heels of French outfits like
Air,
Daft Punk, and
Mellow, the duo of
Stéphane Bodin and Françoise Marché boast a danceable sound that should be all too familiar to fans of any of the aforementioned groups. Taking a healthy dose of disco, a dash of house, a sprinkle of electro-funk, and enough vocoder-processed vocals to make Midnight Starr jealous,
Bosco sounds like the last 25 years of dance music jammed into a groove processor, then set on frappé. The band has a colorful personality and an uncanny ear for melodic hooks, which lends tracks like "Satellite" and "Nonstop Nonsense" (which features
B-52's frontman
Fred Schneider on vocals) an infectiousness that's hard to deny. But their unusual sense of musical simplicity occasionally makes Action feel like a techno novelty, with minimalist jingles like "Mr. Fresh" making
Trio's "Da Da Da" sound about as complex as "Bohemian Rhapsody" by comparison. This isn't a bad record by any means, and will almost certainly appeal to fans of
Daft Punk in particular, but you might not be able to escape a nagging sense that you've heard it all before. ~ Bret Love