In the interest of giving the marriage-band Mates of State a different review for once, the following things will not be discussed: love, the love-gaze, relationships as metaphors for music, music as metaphor for relationships, and so on. This restriction is not to deny that Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel aren't adorable (stomach-crampingly so, actually), or that they don't consciously play off their gimmick-- excuse me-- unique situation, for all it's worth. It's just to consider their music in a different way than a million other muso-hacks who pounce on the easy angle. Umm, don't check the archives.
Instead, this thinkpiece will celebrate a duo who even money said would flare out after an excellent debut and a sagging follow-up, but who fought the odds to scrape back with a third album that remembers what they did right in the first place, while simultastically evolving their sound in surprising ways. 2002's Our Constant Concern threatened to point the band towards weepy Hallmark piano balladeering, conforming to the criticsphere's pretty portrait of the Mates as Cupid in Indie Clothes. But now Team Boo brings back the carefree raucousness that marked My Solo Project: giant calliope organ! Crooked waltz drumming! Joyous holleration harmonies!
Not everywhere, unfortunately, as sluggard songs like "Parachutes (Funeral Song)" and "The Kissaway" still hang around to drag down the third quarter. But don't be lured to the skip button by the slow tempo opening of "Open Book", as the song blooms to a size more epic than anything in their catalog, complete with mini-choir. Cracker-Jack surprises like that lift Team Boo above tired retread status, with the duo allowing outside players in on the action for the first time (and now you can see how the relationship metaphor would've gotten kinda, well, gross).
Change is applied most convincingly to "Whiner's Bio", in which a squint-bright trumpet pops up to underscore the pair's vocal cross-stitch. Later, a brassy gloss is applied to the finale of "An Experiment", a lengthy-for-them track that might've otherwise succumbed to dreariness. While the Mates never had any problem avoiding a thin sound, what with Gardner's meaty organ and Hammel's cephalopod drumming, things were starting to skew in a predictable direction, and producer/Spooninite Jim Eno's tasteful appliqué of the horn (and elegantly unobtrusive amount of overdubbing) suggests the group isn't quite up against a dead end yet.
Elsewhere, as advertised, are a handful of reminders why My Solo Project was able to chase away the easy Quasi comparisons. "Ha Ha" revisits the patchwork structure of their early material, compressing a good three or four distinct segments into a rollicking three minutes. "I Got This Feelin'" allows the industrial hum of organ bass to slide contentedly while the husband and wife harmonize on one of their most incongruous lyrics ever: "This couldn't be more GHETTO!" "Sound It Off" and "Fluke" also provide moments of distorted-organ goodness and polyrhythmic jarring, answering my prayers for a music that combines the fun of baseball stadium P.A. music and math-rock.
So Team Boo turns out to be a surprisingly respectable junior-year effort-- one that puts Mates of State in the small minority of indie-pop bands that don't fall under the one-album-and-out rule. Whether they can push the limits of their sound much further remains to be seen (Fridmann and his pocket orchestra need not apply), but their first shaky steps towards outside collaboration work well here. Hell, maybe it'll even be enough to fool people into writing about something other than how damn cute they are! Maybe.
