Much of the press Brooklyn duo Exitmusic garnered for its 2011 EP, From Silence, depended as much on the pair's backstory as their tension-dependent sound. The tale of Aleksa Palladino and Devon Church, after all, is more than a good narrative hook; it's a real-life manifestation of the kind of woozy, romantic arch you've either seen in your daydreams, on the silver screen, or in paperbacks filed in the young-adult or classic literature sections. The daughter of a New York opera singer, Palladino met the relatively agrarian Church in the smoking car of a train while backpacking across Canada. They were teenagers. The new friends tried to watch a meteor shower from the train's observation car, failed, and soon bid adieu; Church wrote her letters, bid for her affection, and eventually just moved to New York and in with her. They got married on Mulholland Drive, she found success as an actress, and they since started an interesting indie rock band together. "As they share a cigarette on the walk to their apartment, they think about their coming week," read a 2011 profile for The Stool Pigeon. "The Emmys, New York Fashion Week, the season premiere of 'Boardwalk Empire'." Yes, then, sometimes love can be like the movies.
But Palladino and Church's shared past is more than simple star-laced bait; it's essential to the drama and radiance of their music. If their story sounds like one to be written into a movie, the 10 songs on their Secretly Canadian full-length debut, Passage, feel like scores for pictures not yet made. Insurgent, cinematic, and sometimes brilliant, Passage is an emotionally evocative record bearing sharp hooks, driven deep by heavy textures and broad dynamics. Suggesting Berlin and Bowie, Bedhead and Portishead, Exitmusic's third release continues and catalyzes the pair's stepwise progression, which began with their muted, self-released start in 2007 and last year's refined if stylistically cramped four-track re-introduction. Produced at home by Church but mixed and mastered by the phenomenal Nicolas Vernhes, these songs sound incredible, with their tessellated instrumental layers and intricately woven effects. All at once, it's a sudden move from short films and home movies to a proper, feature-length production. For Palladino and Church, this next level works wonders.
True to her classical pedigree, Palladino is an incredibly versatile singer, able to hurtle gracefully from a Victoria Legrand whisper at the start of "The Modern Age" to a strident command by the time she strangles the tune's final refrain. She sends up smoke during weird waltz "The Night" and plumes of grey during the appropriately named "Storms". Above the outwardly building patter of "White Noise", she shadows the unwavering cool of Zola Jesus; "The Modern Age", the album's lone From Silence holdover, sports the steely glint of the National, just remixed for the fading hours between the dance club's and the bed's rest. During the opening title track, they split her sound open, using her wail as an ornate thread in much the way Sigur Rós once did with Jónsi Birgisson's croon. On "The Wanting", her singing and the treatment the pair give it again mirror Birgisson's alien tone. It becomes the all-encompassing gauze around, above, and beneath a piano-and-bass plod. Both multi-instrumentalists, she and Church weave these vocals into deft thickets of occasionally abrasive electronics, chime-to-roar guitars, wobbly organs, and drums that help conjure the melodrama. But Palladino's adaptability is clearly Exitmusic's anchor, the unifying characteristic that allows the band to scatter from film to dance music, from post-rock heights to mellow-gold lows.
In the wake of so many Silver Lake indie hitmakers and Williamsburg careerists, it's tempting to dismiss Exitmusic as the vain time-sink of two well-to-do adults suspended in artistic adolescence. Perhaps you assume that the indie rock aspirations of a starlet who once acted opposite Scarlett Johansson must somehow smack of condescension. But to Exitmusic's great credit, Church is no Pete Yorn, and there's very little that's precious or reserved about this music or the way Palladino sings. Instead, it's audacious and ambitious, twisting lyrics about depravity and loneliness into shared anthems meant for overcoming both. More than a cash-in or credibility play, Passage simply pulls several familiar objects into one detailed picture, a predictably good look from a pair whose script seems every bit as written as much as lived.
