The Donnybrook Writing Academy

Most Likely To: make an indie-nerd shake his skinny ass.

This writer has seen lots of inexplicable things over his many years following pop music. He has seen Jethro Tull win a Grammy for Best Heavy Metal Album. He has seen the spiritual descendents of the original punk movement happily embrace prog values in the guise of Coheed & Cambria, the Mars Volta and the Decemberists. He has seen Iggy Pop have a top-40 hit, Sam Phillips never have one, and Matchbox20 have way, way too many. He has seen Paula Abdul installed as a judge of musical talent. But he can’t think of anything that has ever seemed as initially flummoxing as the indie-rock nation’s wholehearted embrace of the enigmatic Swedish disco thrush Sally Shapiro.

This is not a negative comment on the quality of Shapiro’s music, which is in general quite high. Nor is it a dismissal of dance pop in general. Far from it – this writer has long been an aficionado of the disco beat in its many forms. He’s pondered the great question “what is love” with Haddaway, and gleefully joined Culture Beat in hurling derisive epithets at the vile Mr. Vain. He’s run alongside the Pet Shop Boys with the dogs in suburbia and gone on holiday with Madonna. He definitely can’t get Kylie Minogue out of his head (not that any sane male would want to).

The funny thing is, in all his excursions into the world of dance music he’s seen armies of gay men and more than his fair share of drunken sorority girls. But he can’t recall ever once seeing pasty-faced white boys in Arcade Fire t-shirts wading onto the disco dance floor. No, in general, those sorts have regarded programmed synth beats with disdain unless there is some way to pass it off as avant-garde or somehow descended from the techno-gods in Kraftwerk or New Order. Anything else has been viewed as suspect.

So what explains the love in the indie-nation for Sally Shapiro? Her music seems about as standard disco-pop as anything this side of Rozelle. It could be that she has an interestingly obscure backstory – a young Swedish girl so shy she won’t reveal her real name, perform live, or allow her producer to stay inside the building when she records her vocals. It could be that she performs “Italo Disco,” a branch of dance music which differs from regular eurodisco by…well, I honestly don’t have a clue what makes Italo Disco different from euro or any other kind of disco. But that doesn’t matter – as long as a music snob has an obscure sounding categorization he can hide behind, he can make liking anything sound like the act of a learned expert: “Sure, Journey were faceless corporate rockers, but they were great because they played Post-Airplane-Bay Area-Faceless-Corporate-Rock, and that makes all the difference.”

Perhaps the most superficially likely but least likeable answer is that it’s hip to like Sally Shapiro because she was brought to North America by an indie-label with a buttload of indie-cred. Paper Bag Records has been home to Stars, Tokyo Police Club, You Say Party! We Say Die!, and many other indie darlings, and if Paper Bag says it’s okay to like Sally, then damn it, it’s okay to like Sally. Had Shapiro come to the states via a major label, would she have garnered the same attention in the same circles? One suspects not.

But perhaps that sells her boosters in the indie-rock community too short. While a superficial listen to Shapiro’s second album doesn’t exactly offer much explanation for her heightened credibility amongst the Vampire Weekend set compared to, say, Crystal Waters, there is more here than might meet the eye. Producer John Agebjörn crafts backing tracks for her which shimmer and pulsate with life and creativity, most notably on “Looking at the Stars” and “Save Your Love,” which builds a pseudo-Kraftwerk synth squiggle into a rollicking dance track. This is music that’s made on machines but definitely feels crafted by a thoughtful and talented human being, instead of beats programmed for maximum danceability.

But it’s Shapiro herself who makes all the difference. Far from the standard brassy, outgoing disco diva, Shapiro brings the mousy shyness of a generation of indie girls raised on Juliana Hatfield and Tanya Donnelly to the dance party. Rather than exhortations to dance, dance, dance, Shapiro sings lyrics full of doubt, longing and desire, usually unfulfilled. She possesses perhaps the most atypical and nuanced persona in dance music this side of the great Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys. Her legendary shyness permeates her music, in the process making her relatable and fairly fascinating.

So in the end, while there are many possible explanations for the indie love for Sally Shapiro, perhaps the real explanation is also the best – they listen to her and they hear a kindred spirit, no matter how far outside their normal listening parameters her music might seem to reside.