Tops are a quartet from Montréal who take a hazy, hipster, furry-edged, indie-sloppy stab at the coked-out excess, glittering melodies, and eternal soap-opera of Fleetwood Mac's soft-rock era. Their debut jam, "Turn Your Love Around," was a little more jangly, shambly, and twee, but their second just-released soundfile, "Diamond Look," takes things a shade further.
Here, things're more saucy, more seedy, more synthy, more faux-luxuriant; the guitar dangling, the bass mildly funky, the keyboards drinking the same flat champagne as swigged by Puro Instinct back when they were Pearl Harbor.
"Starlight/star-bright/like a diamond in the sky," Jane Penny wails, a little off-key, in a voice that laces seduction with acidic snarl. It's no nursery-rhyme sing-song; more femme-tough stand-off gleaned via Madonna's "Lucky Star."
Her lyrics lash into a "pretty boy" carving out a career —and a lothario's reputation— via his cheekbones. Though it could be a contemporary Quebecer, it seems more like Penny is harkening back, retroactively sticking it to the rockstar toffs and coked-out peacocks that strutted around back in the soft-rock era, oblivious to the machinery mining them completely, ready to toss them aside when fashion turns, and looks fade.
Tops, "Diamond Look"
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