Thursday, May 24, 2007

Slow Down Tallahassee - "So Much For Love" cd single

Everything about this cd is just delightful. First, the music - a trio of two-and-a-half to three minute swatches of fuzzy, melodic girl-fronted indie pop, complete with oh-whoa-ohs, handclaps, keyboards and don't-look-now hooks around every corner. So the elements are all there, but in fact one of the most impressive things about the disc is the sturdiness and assuredness of both the songwriting and the execution...though of course being impressed is beside the point - the name of the game here is the music's immediate (and then continuing) effect which is, natch, where the delight comes in.

Over and above the music itself, though, is the aesthetic of the whole. The cd's a three-incher (ie, adorably tiny) and one of a limited run of 100 (mine's # 47); it came in the mail with a handwritten note from someone at the record company which puts it out (Cloudberry Records) - ending with the capitalised exhortation "don't stop indiepop!", no less - and a scissored-out scrap of a review of another band.

Here's what the band's myspace has to say (it's apt):

We met behind the bar of a seedy nightclub, serving endless drinks as Motown hits and disco classics stopped our hearts from giving in. Taking our inspiration from the paintings of Henry Darger, the writings of Dorothy Parker and Pablo Neruda, girl groups, playground gangs, paperback romances, tear-jerking pop and the burning ambition to write an album full of the greatest, most thoughtful pop hits that this country has ever seen, we formed a band and the fun began. JOIN OUR GANG, AND YOU WILL NEVER BE LONELY AGAIN.

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Came across them through angels twenty, one of only two mp3-type blogs with which I more or less keep up (the other being motel de moka, which I secretly find rather inspiring).