Canadian new wave revivalists
Dragonette are a bouncy electro-pop act with a glammy, polymorphic persona rather like that of
the Scissor Sisters, with whom they share management, and a sound often akin to
Hot Hot Heat, the first album by
the Killers, and other successful revivers of the sound of MTV's first half-decade. Prior to the formation of
Dragonette, singer and lyricist
Martina Sorbara (the daughter of a member of Ontario's provincial government, Finance Minister Greg Sorbara) had maintained a moderately successful solo career as an adult album alternative solo artist in the style of
Sarah McLachlan or other delicate neo-folkies;
Sorbara's debut solo album,
The Cure for Bad Deeds, was released in 2002. She has since disparaged her former Lilith Fair-style musical efforts with the pungent phrase "tampon music"; just as notoriously, her father dismissed
Dragonette in a quote to the Scottish newspaper The Daily Record as a "market-driven" phase that was "part of the raciness of current popular culture."
Sorbara formed
Dragonette in 2005 with her husband, bassist
Dan Kurtz (formerly of the jazz and electronica-influenced Toronto-based jam band
the New Deal), guitarist
Simon Craig, and drummer
Joel Stouffer. A self-released and self-titled demo that year attracted the attention of the U.K. office of Mercury Records, which offered the group a recording contract the following year. Moving their base of operations from Toronto to London (and losing
Craig in the process, replaced by British guitarist
Will Stapleton),
Dragonette released their first single, "I Get Around," in April 2007. Three more singles followed, "Take It Like a Man," "Competition," and a gender-reversal cover of
Calvin Harris' hit "The Girls" called "The Boys."
Dragonette's debut album,
Galore, was released in late summer 2007. The same year,
Martina Sorbara sang the lead vocals on the hit
Basement Jaxx single "Take Me Back to Your House."
Galore was released in the U.S. in 2008 via I Surrender Records. ~ Stewart Mason, All Music Guide