Moto Boy Moto Boy by: Steve Scully Tue:19-Feb-08 Label: Songs I Wish I Had Written Year: 2008 WB rating 42 out of 100

In 1975, Mick Ronson released Play Don’t Worry. The album art showed a mullet-ed Ronson in a rockstar pose, screaming while ripping it up on his electric. The album itself included some of the most timidly beautiful tracks of the decade. Moto Boy’s self-titled release suffers from a similar incongruity: the album art is a shadow-engulfed, lipstick clad, androgynous face with ‘Moto Boy’ written in bright pink scrawl. You could only infer George Michael-esque, somewhat glam pop. You’d be wrong on most counts.

I would like to introduce you to Swedish pop superstar, Humlebo. Actually, Humlebo’s Myspace ‘About Me’ entry says it all:

‘Hi! this is Moto Boy´s myspace profile. Moto Boy is Oskar Humlebo, and he appeared somewhere around 2006-2007 with a sound and stage performance redefining the concept of "one guy with nothing but his guitar and his voice". Vamped up in high heels and makeup, with a nasty black metalguitar and a stunning high-pitched and baryton-deep voice he´s spectacular in his very own way, combining many beautiful things into one. The debut album was released the 16th of January 2008 by music-label Songs I Wish I Had Written.’

Oskar Humlebo (aka Moto Boy) is firmly a child of the 80s. Taking us on a ride through what seems to be a selection from the Eurovision songbook, Humlebo is Sweden’s belated answer to Boy George. Beneath all the bluster – the Adam Ant makeup, the furious metalguitar – Moto Boy’s message is, nonetheless, a simple an honest one: almost every song here is a heart-wrenching love ballad.

‘Young Love’ sets the tone for Moto Boy, and immediately places in the spotlight Humlebo’s strongest feature. Indeed, it is Humlebo’s voice, both ‘baryton’ and ‘high-pitched’, that drives every track. The heavily-layered and harmony-driven approach to vocals is evident in this opening track but discarded to great effect in ‘Rode My Wild Heart’, which is at once the cheesiest and most memorable track, due in part to the Humlebo’s Mercury-inspired vocal acrobatics.

While the singing might be a resounding positive for Moto Boy, the lyrics sung are less than impressive: in them, we hear more ABBA than anywhere else… the Swedes will forever be cursed for attempting to sing in English. Beneath the clichéd song titles (‘I Miss You, Baby’, ‘Feed Me With a Kiss’, What It Was Like to Be With You’ and ‘Young Love’ are the pick of the bunch) sit even more clichéd, cryptic turns of phrase, such as this perfect opening verse from ‘Rode My Wild Heart’: “I spy with my black eye/A vicious world and a vicious ride/We’re gonna dance with the devil tonight/Shaky shake in the pale moon light/And if you ever get hopelessly poor/Even if you loose [sic] it all/I just know I’m gonna love you more.” It’s not quite a dancing queen rhyming with a tambourine, but it’s definitely something special. As Moto Boy ‘shaky shakes’ with his metalguitar, the words become less and less meaningful in the rocking ‘Blue Motobike’: “I’ll pick you up/On my blue motorbike/I’ll be there seven-ish/And you’d better hold on tight/Cause I like the sense of speed and I like the sense of you/Maybe you like me too.”

It’s no surprise that Moto Boy gains a new lease on life with the wordless numbers, ‘Liebling’ and ‘Karki’. Really, the musicality behind the numbers is nothing more than mediocre: the chord progression in ‘Karki’ is as unremarkable as the song’s only lyrics, “Karki, I love you.” Similarly, a few of the sparsely-strummed notes seem to be mis-hit by Humlebo as he strains his falsetto to its limits. Much more impressive is ‘Liebling’, as a chorus of reverberated Humlebo’s twiddle away with ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’. It may have the melody of an average Christmas hymn, but it at least shows the listener that Humlebo has some gall, some ability to go out on a limb.

Ultimately, this is the deciding factor with Moto Boy: can you allow for the painfully superficial? In between riding his wild heart and hopping onto his blue motorbike for a bit of shaky shake, surely the object of Humlebo’s affection yearns for a bit more too. Beneath the make-up, he may not be as ugly as Gene Simmons or Paul Stanley, but his music washes off as easily as his cheap-eyeliner.