Songs from the
DAG! Records
By Beverly Bryan
Pretty
but warped in places like a tape left outside on a hot day, The Inner Banks’ second
album Songs from the Disko Bay takes
indie music back to some of its most beautiful and thoughtful moments from around
the turn of the Millennium. Caroline Schutz delivers surreal, vaguely
apocalyptic lyrics in the matter-of-fact mode of Aimee Mann (though, at some
points, she sounds as sweet and approachable as Mirah). Strings, tambourines and
acoustic guitar blend and wrap the listener in a soothing chamber-pop cocoon.
“Come Back” is as perfect as any early Belle and Sebastian number but
off-kilter in a Fiery Furnaces kind of way and sunlit in a way that put’s one
in mind of early Mates of State. The following track, “Darling” is nearly as
heartfelt and tender as Ida’s best with shades of Elliott Smith.
The
married duo (David Gould is the other half) throw some odd and dissonant sounds
in among the tinkling, shimmering, lovely ones but never really break away from
their dreamy comfort zone, however, they do manage to explore its breadth and
depth quite thoroughly. They express their psych-pop thesis most fully with the
sad and very strange “Tournament of Wives” before touching down in Nico’s Chelsea Girls territory with “Big Bang.”
If they don’t quite have a sound of their own, perhaps The Inner Banks can be
forgiven because so few people these days are bothering to make the kind of
stylish and heartfelt music these two make so well. When nobody writes them
like they used to, it may as well be them.
