Please, please, please: No mistaking precocious sister act Smoosh for notorious twin duo Prussian Blue. It's easy enough-- what, with both pairs resembling Hanson minus its manliest member. But neo-Nazis these girls aren't. Where 13-year-olds Lynx and Lamb allude to Rudolph Hess as a "man of peace" and wear tees emblazoned with matching Hitler smileys, Smoosh-- similarly blonde sisters Chloe and Asya, 12 and 14 respectively-- eschew white supremacist agendas to instead preach the gospel of nothing in particular: They write 100% of their songs, and their subject matter spans a spectrum of puppy love, vicarious insecurity, and purposely vague pop-song claptrap.
Pre-teen at the time of their much-buzzed-about 2004 debut She Like Electric, Smoosh were rooted on by, among others, Cat Power, Eddie Vedder, and Chloe's drum teacher Jason McGerr of Death Cab for Cutie. The live show is reportedly a thing of pure joy: Here's where leggy blonde fountains of youth show up men and moody singer-songwriting chicks two and three times older. Chloe and Asya are in music-- they've said in countless interviews-- for the sheer fun of it, and the sincerity shows.
Asya's roughly the age of Hilary Duff-circa-"Lizzie McGuire"-- old enough to have her heart shattered by Aaron Carter, too old to croon Kidz Bop Modest Mouse covers. She Like Electric is a grab bag of styles and ultimately missteps (e.g., Asya rapping), but bull's-eyes include supremely catchy indie pop ditties pertaining to boy hairdos like "But Now I Know". Free To Stay, for the most part-- and most successfully-- sticks to inlaid heartachey piano strains transmitting delight and distress, in that order.
There are shortcomings: "Rock Song" and "Organ Talk" are as irksome as She Like Electric's more exasperating trial-errors; Asya frequently gets carried away with "ohhhhs" and "whoaaas." Free to Stay's main difficulty is that songs aren't packaged like they should be. Catchy as they are (or aspire to be), they still don't stick-- unfurling sometimes sloppily out of perfect pop shells.
When Smoosh are good, though, they're really good. Even the second time around, Asya's voice surprises. It's tremulous and poignant as usual, if a little deeper nowadays. On slowed-down sad song "Waiting for Something", Asya sounds sweet, even near tears, sighing, "I don't know why I do these things/ I always regret them/ In the end." This both is and isn't kid stuff: Whatever lyrical deficiencies exist aren't just pardonable, they're more valuable than "Alright already we'll all float on OK"-- that is to say, grown-up turns of phrase from the mouths of babes. And even if the girls are parroting adult themes, at least they're the ones doing the parroting.
