Trabant co-founder Viðar H. Gíslason, the group’s bassist/guitarist also plays with alt-country band, The Funerals. Keyboardist Hlynur A. Vilmarsson used to be in a black metal ensemble and currently composes for the Helsinki Symphony Orchestra. Yet put the two together, along with singer Ragnar Kjartansson, Þorvaldur Gröndal on electronic drums, and DJ Gísli Galdur Þorgeirsson, and the result is pop so pure, it’s as if they attended a school where Brian Wilson was the music teacher.

There’s nothing particularly new about Emotional. Indeed, the album came out in the band’s native Iceland back in 2005 – where it managed to keep Coldplay’s X&Y off the number-one spot, the only artists in the whole of Europe who managed to do so. Yet each and every track offers an experience as fresh as rolling around in a field of daisies.

Live, Trabant use nudity, champagne, and glitter to capture your attention. On record, it’s a similar concoction of balls, fizz, and sparkle. In the band’s own words they’re “shameless and glamorous”, and this is something that comes across in the studio as equally as it does on stage.

Back home, the band are superstars with tuneless wannabees queuing up to cover them on the Icelandic version of X Factor. A situation that should be replicated over here, if not on television, then in your local. As tracks like ‘Pump You Up’, ‘Emotional Meltdown’, and ‘The One’ lend themselves to karaoke, something my unfortunate neighbours have discovered.

Emotional, they may well be. You’d have to be to readily agree to appear looking like members of the gayest boy band ever on the cover. But you can never accused Trabant of being tired.

(4½/5)