The bedroom-tape intimacy of these lo-fi, anti-folk ditties places them
squarely in the confessional singer/songwriter tradition. But there's
nothing traditional (or square) about the mortal kombat between
vocalists Kimya Dawson and Adam Green — no yin/yang perfect fit,
no superego/id tension, no soulmate bullshit. Instead, they finish
off each other's sentences with floating images (sample interplay:
"Tropicana, canned foods/ Botulism, damaged goods") in an effort to
process everything that hits their East Coast senses in a day. If
they still tend to fuse into one being after several listens, it's
certainly not for any spiritual payoff; it's because two selves are
better than one in tackling this affliction of the
information-overload era. Far from erasing the erotic, though, they
skew "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" with heterogeneous carnal
knowledge. Their aggressively unstylized singing makes them each
sound equally approachable, equally available and overwhelmingly
sexy. On second thought, maybe there is a spiritual payoff here.
(Email:
moldypeaches2000@hotmail.com.)
