After all the chest-punching bass and floor-shaking kick drums in yesterday’s post I thought it more than appropriate to turn down the volume and pull back on the BPM’s a little bit today. No, you won’t need a disco ball, strobe light or any other nightclub rigging to enjoy the simple Pop tunes of today’s featured artists. Whatever natural light that happens to filter in through your nearest window will do just fine.
Though the co-ed trio hails from the “Great White North” of Canada (Vancouver, British Columbia to be exact), and they look like they rarely leave the house, “sun-dappled” might be the best way to describe the pretty, Soul-inflected dittys on No Kids‘ debut Tomlab Records release Come Into My House. Much of the album sounds like the orchestra-fueled Pop of the ’50s reinterpreted by a gaggle of goofy school kids helmed by a couple of Indie music nerds with access to some lo-fi electronic instruments and recording equipment. But a handful of songs, most notably “The Beaches All Closed” & “Bluster in the Air,” and to a slightly lesser extent “For Halloween” & “Listen For It,” find the group melding their Indie-Pop sensibilities with the songwriting, arranging, production style and vocal affectations of contemporary (think R. Kelly, Justin Timberlake, Akon and Robin Thicke) radio R&B, celebrating it’s status in the long-term Pop music pantheon in the process. These tracks, with their use of drum-machine beats and electronic bass programming as a foundation for an array of more organic instruments and vocalist Nick Krgovich’s exaggerated falsetto vocals, might garner comparisons to the likes of The Blow, Hot Chip and David “Aqueduct” Terry, among others.
No Kids “The Beaches All Closed”
From the Valley to the Stars, the forthcoming (out February 27th in Scandinavia on The Concretes‘ Licking Fingers imprint) third LP from Gothenburg, Sweden’s Sarah Assbring, a.k.a. El Perro del Mar takes a similar trip back to the lush Orchestral Pop of the 1950’s, but without any detours into modern-day musical territory. She does however draw from contemporaneous styles such as Lounge, Exotica and Space-Age Pop, and indulges in liberal but subtle use of lo-fi electronic instruments throughout the LP which accentuate the traditional musicianship of her accompanists, giving her songs both an otherworldly pall and a pulsating mechanical heartbeat. Though the sigh of strings and the blare of horns are both in effect, in addition to a whole host of other instruments, most of the songs sport stripped-down arrangements that give Assbring’s sensous, almost intangibly airy vocals plenty of space to billow about. Selections like the first single “How Did We Forget,” “To Give Love” and “Somebody’s Baby” are the closest her band ever gets to a “groove,” with the former two being perfect examples of their beautifully sophisticated use of electronic instruments, and the latter a candidate for replacing Feist as Apple’s commercial “it girl.” And while I wouldn’t think to compare the two vocally, fans of Portishead front-woman Beth Gibbons‘ Out of Season LP would likely find some similar joy in From the Valley to the Stars.
El Perro del Mar “How Did We Forget”
-El Keter
