This month I’m featuring my top 20 albums of the past decade, to celebrate 10 years of This Must Be Pop! Click here to see all the Decade of Pop posts so far.
Dialogue has to be the most obscure album in my top 20, and I think that makes its presence all the more impressive. It’s not here because of any special memories or cultural importance, it’s just quite simply a lovely collection of songs. The Honeymoon were an international duo made up of British boy Wayne Murray and Icelandic girl Thorrun Magnusdottir. Both sing on Dialogue, and its the combination of their vocals that creates such a unique sound, but it’s the songwriting that takes the album from interesting to enchanting.
The Honeymoon’s music is much more sweet and gentle than most of the bright, brash pop acts featured in my Decade of Pop, with classic melodies and simple production. It’s nine years old but could easily have been released this year, as it really hasn’t aged at all. Chasing Grace, the British girl-boy duo who played the last This Must Be Pop Live, are quite similar. Maybe The Honeymoon were just ahead of the times? Dialogue is very consistent in quality, but the emotive electro-ballad Act Like You Know Her has always stood out to me as a favourite, while the (slightly) more upbeat Chaos Theory is a good introduction to The Honeymoon’s distinctive sound.