The Cosmopolitans: Wild Moose Party

This album revisits a lost group described by the Village Voice as “New Wave pom-pom girls with brains.” The band, which lasted for roughly a cup and a half of coffee from 1979 to 1981, are a quirky retro-electro pop outfit judging by “(How to Keep Your) Husband Happy” that is a to-do list to, well, keep the hubby happy. From there, the girl-group pulls up their stockings for an interesting, catchy title track falling somewhere between The Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian” and the B-52s. Another little nugget is “Chevy Baby” that has more in common with ‘50s or ‘60s rock while “Psychic Joan” is a cheesy, keyboard-driven tune that could have been found on The Munsters or Bewitched as background music. Most of these tracks fall into the same vein — an odd but effective arrangement and some simple but effective sing-along lyrics as is the case with the old-school feeling of “Party Boy”. A cover version of “Talkin’ Bout You” passes the bar but “Siam” is a hokey song that doesn’t work at all. Some of the recordings aren’t the finest quality, but the slow dance ditty “Doug” is quite nice, even if it revolves around a true story of a wife keeping her husband’s corpse with her in her abode. Overall it’s interesting in a, yes, quirky kind of way.