JJ, JJ N° 2

It's tough finding much in the way of concrete information on JJ, which is how they seem to want it. It's a group, apparently, on Gothenburg, Sweden's Sincerely Yours label, run by the Tough Alliance, which has led to guesses that JJ is actually the Alliance with an added female singer. But whomever or whatever JJ is, JJ No. 2 is tropical balm for the long, hot summer of 2009, electro-flavored indie-pop that acts as a bridge between the barefoot-in-the-head beats of Studio, the airier aspects of the Saint Etienne songbook, sunny folk-pop (see the strum-driven "Are You Still in Vallda?"), and bright, pealing guitars that bridge rudimentary, C86-style Brit-indie and Nigerian highlife. The latter features on both the loping "Intermezzo" and "From Africa to Malaga," which have about as much in common as Vampire Weekend does with Extra Golden, i.e. not very much aside from confident execution. JJ are just as apt to borrow tropes from U.S. pop: the closer, "Me & Dean," swipes its key line from Taylor Dayne's "Tell It to My Heart" (down to the phrasing) and "Ecstasy" folds in the bleeping keyboards of Lil Wayne's "Lollipop." Those references are cheeky, yes, but they fit as easily as everything else here.