Blogarhythms

For some reason I’ve both me and my housemate came down with a sudden craving for Reese’s Pieces candies yesterday evening. I actually got up, put my headphones on, and made a late-night trip to a nearby store, so I’m really not sure how I managed to come away without the tasty treats in question. But my midnight ambulation gave me the chance to ruminate on a few things none-the-less.

The whole subject of Harry Burnett Reese’s confectionery genius must have served as a subliminal reminder of the old “you got peanut butter in my chocolate,” “you got chocolate in my peanut butter” commercials, because my mind drifted to the subject of seemingly unusual combinations and how they often turn out to be surprisingly delicious. How many times have a described a musical act as sounding like one artist mixed with another? That’s what I’m talking about. And in many cases the artists being amalgamated weren’t ones I’d had occasion to speak of in the same breathe before.

Such is the case with Quitzow, the stage-persona of multi-instrumentalsist Erica Quitzow, and a song from her newly-released sophomore LP Art College titled (appropriately enough) “Peanut.” A friskily upbeat tune built around galloping drum-machine beats, playful keyboard melodies and thick syth buzzes with precious-but-calloused lyrics and a precocious vocal, “Peanut” sounds like a fusion of Peaches-style Electroclash and Kimya Dawson’s childlike-but-worldly Anti-Folk. I love both Kimya and Peaches, but I can’t say I’ve ever thought of mashing them together. You got Twee-Pop in my Electro! You got Electro in my Twee-Pop!

The product of home-recording sessions, with Quitzow writing, producing, engineering, playing guitar, Moog, Korg, Rhodes, cello & violin, supplying vocals and programing MPC-based beats with help from co-producer Gary Levitt, Art College as a whole is more of a diverse melange of sounds and styles than even “Peanut” could have given an indication of. From the big bombastic beats and full-bodied strings of “Sponsor (It Didn’t Mean a Thing)” to the stripped-down Jazz-inflected orchestral Chamber-Pop of the cynically sultry “Love,” she covers a lot of musical territory during the album’s 42-minutes and 42-seconds of playtime.

In addition to the aforementioned Kimya Dawson and Peaches I found myself hearing similarities between Quitzow and Adrianne “DRI” Verhoeven, M.I.A., Claire Broadley’s output as Printed Circuit, Cannonball Jane, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Kudu, Santogold and Janelle Monáe. The last few in particular stick out as Quitzow’s musical kin because of their penchant for stacking Rock riffs, cut-up Hip-Hop-style arrangements and electronic beats with subtle soulfulness and serious-minded-but-sardonic songwriting concerned with the intricacies of post-modern urban life. The title track for example, with it’s low-slung Post-Punk bassline, suspicious stop-start groove, synths, deceptively care-free “la-la-la’s” and belligerently disaffected lyricism plays well as an in-the-mix companion to Santogold’s “L.E.S. Artistes.”

Quitzow “Art College”

I guess standing in your local Wallgreens flipping back and forth between Santogold, Metropolis Suite I: The Chase and Art College on your MP3 player and wondering why you walked there in the middle of the night in the first place isn’t such a bad thing. But if it happens to you just try to remember the Reese’s Pieces before you leave.