Contradictions surround SWEET TEMPEST, Luna Kira’s and Julian Winding’s Berlin-based synth- pop duo, originally formed in Copenhagen. Aside from that ambiguous moniker, there’s the fact they want people to dance to songs about inequality and prejudice, and the way those songs are sometimes superficially frigid yet always warm-hearted beneath. Ask them who inspired them, too, and they’re as likely to point to Tom Waits as Ace of Base (though only the latter’s first album. It’s important to make that distinction.) And then there’s their personal history, an ‘Are they? /Aren’t they?’ soap opera which went on for over a decade.
SWEET TEMPEST, in other words, offer plenty to reflect upon, just like their debut debut album, GOING DOWN DANCING, which is drenched in 80s synths rewired for the 2020s, recalling artists like Lykke Li, Little Dragon, La Roux and Annie, with Pet Shop Boys’ literate pop and Stevie Nicks’ otherworldliness among further crucial ingredients. Inspired by a turbulent era in not only their own world but the world at large, they’ve have left behind the dream-pop of their foolish youth in favour of something less escapist, challenging listeners with essential if not always palatable ideas buried in often-exuberant pop like ground glass in toffee apples. “We may be privileged,” they explain, “but we value compassion and never learned how to shut up.” Sweet indeed, but razor-sharp, and a sign of storms on the horizon that no one can afford to ignore.
