Australian chanteuse Sally Seltmann may be the best-known singer/songwriter you've never heard of. Though Heart That’s Pounding is the first collection she's released under her own name (she was born Sally Russell, but took the surname of the Avalanches' Darren Seltmann when they married), she created two albums, 2005's Last Beautiful Day and 2007's Somewhere, Anywhere, as New Buffalo for Arts & Crafts. She also co-wrote a little song called "1234" that she gave to her friend and labelmate Feist. Through "1234" and her own work, Seltmann has helped architect a specific strain of MOR indie-- slightly quirky songs with perky chamber arrangements or glitchy electronic shading to add depth to its acoustic backbone. By finally dropping New Buffalo in favor of her own name, she is possibly leading with her songwriting credits more than her previous records
Seltmann isn't a powerful singer, but her breathy, dainty voice is well-matched to slight, shivery melodies bulked up with silvery synths or swooning piano. Album opener "Harmony to My Heartbeat" fills the space between her spare, calliope-like melodies with peppy handclaps and a foundation of programmed-raindrop percussion. It's sparse twitchiness recalls bedroom electro-pop, but with sunnier, more expansive aims. But it's hard to walk the tightrope between hushed, poignant, electro-inflected pop ballads and mawkish lite-FM fodder, and Seltmann's songs can have trouble maintaining that balancing act. "The Truth" errs on the side of over-sentimentality with its gooey Karen Carpenter vocals. And on "Over the Borderline" Seltmann tries her hand at the kind of uplifting, this-is-a-new-day anthem that the Polyphonic Spree usually traffic in, and her bald-faced optimism is difficult to take with a straight face.
Parts of the album are guaranteed to give you a toothache, but it's the most overly saccharine songs that may appeal to satellite radio programmers [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| and licensing supervisors, and thus be Seltmann's ticket to name recognition. And, in fact, that is the lasting result of "1234"'s success. Combining charming melodies, a wistful coo, and interesting-enough flourishes, these kind of unabashedly emotional, purposefully eccentric tracks are shorthand for a certain kind of hipster love affair. That is not Seltmann's fault, but it may be her legacy.
