I haven't been this happy to be sad since I first listened to Carissa's Weird
Okay, I admit it: I liked The Murmurs' first album. Just let me get that right out in the open. There's just something about girls singing high harmony that just melts my black heart. So charge your glasses, my friends, because tonight we toast to the sweet and easy.
Indie rock in 2007 seemed shadowed, to me, by a forest cluttered with timbres of math rock nouveau (Battles) and Brian Wilson wannabes (Dirty Projectors, Panda Bear, Animal Collective). Filling albums with complex overtures, changing time signatures, and discordant melodies, many songs could be described as little more than controlled chaos; more complicated than complex. So it is refreshing to hear bands, like Au Revoir Simone, who write music rooted in simplicity.
I use the word "simplicity", here, as a compliment, not to suggest the music is boring or limited. True, Au Revoir Simone harmonize on the major scale. However, they do so with a fresh sincerity. At no time during the album did I feel I was being "sold" a song; there is no apparent cynicism, no ambition to be a chart-topper. Rather, the album sounds like a final letter to a lover ("we fold like icicles on paper shelves"). A letter you inadvertently intercepted, perused, and later felt guilty for reading because of its openness and honesty. With lines that are somewhat introverted, yet unaware of themselves, the songs come off as wholly unpretentious. A welcome relief.
Unfortunately, like other music in the Alco-Pop genre (a term I just coined, by the way), it doesn't take much to have too much. I've listened to The Bird of Music twice now, and my head is swimming a little. Not in a bad way, but I know if I have one more go, it'll put me over the edge, andI'll end up making out with the lady from human resources. So let this be a warning: listen to Au Revoir Simone responsibly.
So if you like The Bachelorette, Postal Service, Stereolab, or Grandaddy, I think you will like this little trio. Oh, and if you're in Montreal, check them out. They're playing tonight at La Tulipe. I tried to get my little sister to go, but she said she'd only go if I did, and the price of direct flights between Wellington and Montreal were a bit restrictive--one could even go so far as to say nonexistent.
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