When it comes to decorum, Brooklyn's Au Revoir Simone makes Judith Martin look like Don Rickles. They have three voices, three keyboards, and a drum machine in their arsenal, yet each element stands out from the gleaming propulsion with razored precision, as if the band were constantly saying, "No, after you." They deliver inspirational-kitten-calendar platitudes that would make Whitney Houston blush with disarming directness, their plain yet dulcet voices arranged in fussy group harmony-- excessive melisma being, after all, simply immodest. The band's egalitarian and mutually supportive dynamic pays off on the harmonious Still Night, Still Light, their third and best album. It's feather-light electro-pop that's not to be taken lightly.
As always, the music is utterly innocent of abrasion, dissonance, and chance-- everything is clamped down so tightly that the unstinting pertness seems neurotic; the insistence on letting go, moving on, and being who you are a "doth protest too much" kind of thing. You start to wonder what sort of roiling emotional bedlam all of this chipper well-being is keeping at bay. Yet the starchy sincerity keeps things merrily ambiguous, and politeness saturates the lyrics as well as the music. "Only You Can Make You Happy" feels like stumbling into the daily affirmation part of a group-therapy session, were it sung in a melting madrigal over lazily scudding synthesizers.
The contrast between goopy sentiments and rigorous music is one thing that makes Au Revoir Simone unique, but their take on the break-up song is of even greater interest. They hospice their own love affairs with tenderness and grace, thereby avoiding the garden varieties-- vindictive, triumphant, pathetic, unilateral-- of the form. They strive for consensus in "let's discuss this reasonably until we both agree to break up in a loving and supportive fashion" songs, and achieve some of their sharpest lyrics in this mode. On "Shadows", they sing, "I'm moving on/ I hope you're coming with me/ Because I'm not strong without you." Come with me by going away, help me be strong enough to leave you-- it's a crafty illustration of romantic intractability.
Despite their veneer of cunning naïveté, there is much more to Au Revoir Simone than rudimentary keyboards and adorable pigtails. "All or Nothing", a chiming bedtime anthem about getting drunk in taxicabs, supports the notion that the group's studied banality is less of a worldview than a wish. They're still turning out ditties of piercing simplicity-- "The Last One" and "Take Me As I Am" could be transcribed for a baby's mobile with little loss of effect-- but there are also svelte keyboards in deft counterpoint on "Knight of Wands" and carefully contrasted bright and matte tones in the riff of "Only You Can Make You Happy". The songs move with lathed elegance from skeletal to bursting and back again. The clichés arrive at a breathtaking clip, imbued not with the melodrama of pop theater, but the earnest intimacy of a friend murmuring in your ear.
