Zooey (No 1,082)

This French duo take the breezy harmonies of Burt Bacharach and Brian Wilson to create blissful Balearica-tinged pop
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Perfectly Seine ... Zooey's Matthieu Beck and Marie Merlet. Photograph: Yann Stofer

Hometown: South London.

The lineup: Matthieu Beck and Marie Merlet.

The background: It just so happened that last week we were in Connecticut, and it just so happens that this week we're off the coast of Spain, staying at the famous Pikes Hotel in Ibiza, where they filmed Wham's Club Tropicana video. And what would be the perfect soundtrack for lazy lounging by the same pool where George and Andrew sipped pina coladas (which aren't free, by the way, never were, unless you're a bouffant-haired pop star from Bushey)? Something, perhaps, that matches the mood of Mediterranean languor?

If you're expecting us to be unpredictable and lay some extreme noise terror on you, you're going to be mightily disappointed because today's new band appear to have been designed to be wafted through the PA at Pikes. Zooey are a French duo, currently living in London, in thrall to the 90s St Etienne/High Llamas/Stereolab axis and those groups' revisionist, cerebral take on ba-ba-ba pop, the breezy harmonies of Free Design and Fifth Dimension, and the melodies of Burt Bacharach and Brian Wilson. It's E-Z listening soft-rock that only rarely nods to developments in pop music subsequent to 1970, and even then wilfully ignores psychedelia and anything remotely countercultural. Often, the music is enhanced by electronic touches and gentle beats, at which point it becomes the most blissful Balearica.

Apparently, Matthieu Beck and Marie Merlet met and fell in love on a French island, but we're not interested in their private life or indeed anyone else's, unless it's the one notorious Pikes resident Grace Jones sang about. Merlet used to play in Monade with Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab, which makes sense, and is a member of another ace retro Francophile project called Lisbonne. Meanwhile, Beck moonlights in a French disco-pop troupe called Adam Kesher. Together, they've recorded a bunch of tunes, including the Travelin' Light and Time to Meet Outside EPs. They write all the music (except for the odd cover version, such as their take on Pavement's Father to a Sister of Thought, rendered as a Gauloise-tinged ballad), perform it and produce at home in south London, except for one track, Pique-Nique, which they schlepped all the way to Bordeaux to edit and mix, not that you'd notice the difference: they turn everywhere they go into a smoky jazz bar by the Seine. In 1964. They even do the artwork – this is a fully-realised, self-contained world that they operate in. The male vocals are winsome, the female ones lissom, and if it all sounds a bit sexless and neutered, as though they were robots created to express only prettiness and gentle rapture, that's probably deliberate. And unlike Stereolab, there are no intimations of Marxist philosophy or dialectical materialism here, unless we've seriously misjudged the messages of Raindrops and I'm So Glad You Came This Morning.

The buzz: "A perfect marriage of tropicalia percussions, vintage synths and sweet girl/boy vocals" – thethingswedidlastsummer.tumblr.com.

The truth: They don't put the glock into glockenspiel, not even once.

Most likely to: Shuttle between London and Bordeaux.

Least likely to: Shove a shuttlecock down their shorts.

What to buy: The Time to Meet Outside EP is out now on Recorder.

File next to: Stereolab, Giorgio Tuma, Komeda, Lisbonne.

Links: frannyandzooey.org.

Friday's new band: Tropics.

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