Team Me – To the Treetops! (2011)

First of all, this record is so crammed full of joy it’ll either make you giddy with happiness, or sick with a twee overdose. If the latter is true then you’ve no soul and you’re dead inside. Norwegian five-piece Team Me have created a symphonic, layered, choral and utterly hook-laden album in To the Treetops! which manages not to come across as a cloying attempt by a religious sect to appear cool to the kids (hello, Polyphonic Spree). In the gloom of February, this album is positively bursting with summer energy and good vibes and is already perhaps one of the records we’ll still be talking about when 2012 draws to a close. Recently down from six members to five (vocals and keys lady Synne Øverland Knudsen left the band in January due to personal and political reasons: she didn’t want the band to be nominated for an award sponsored by Norwegian energy company Statoil) Team Me won the pop album award at the Spellemannprisens – the Norwegian version of the Grammys – recently, and listening to the tracks on To the Treetops! it’s no wonder that the album got such recognition.