The only people in the music business successfully marketing sounds like the once fervently hyped Magic Numbers'-- that is, unassumingly sentimental folk-pop even an exhausted Baby Boomer could love-- are in the coffee business. Almost as remarkable as the songs on the Magic Numbers' self-titled 2005 debut was their indifference to fashion, both underground and mainstream.
More than eight months after the UK edition hit well-stocked import aisles, this slimmed-down domestic release of Those the Brokes won't bring commercial success to the band any more readily. At least, not unless the sort of people who don't usually seek out new music somehow discover the disc's best tracks. If they do, they'll hear several solid-to-excellent songs that extend the rootsy trajectory of the Magic Numbers' fine first outing, making up in winsome intensity what they lack as far as edginess or sex appeal.
First UK single "Take a Chance" encourages us to risk our pride for love. The burnished harmonies of the group's two sibling pairs-- Trinidad natives Romeo and Michele Stodart along with London-born duo Angela and Sean Gannon-- make it easy to overlook any risks the cheery power-pop arrangement declines to take itself. The video for second single "This Is a Song" shows the band playing to a slowly growing assemblage of cross-legged young people, a real sleeper hit. Despite the apparent obviousness of the title, this is a song against itself-- as broken-hearted as it is upbeat and catchy. ("Don't wanna hear it," comes a backing vocal.) The questioning "Let Somebody In" and comparatively muscular "You Never Had It" each glide by on the kind of inchoate magic that in more credulous days used to be called "soul".
Although primary lead singer Romeo Stodart's wimpy vocal style may owe something to '80s and '90s indie-pop, such comparisons are recipes for disappointment. There's nothing shambling or insular about the Magic Numbers' approach. And as with Irish rockers the Thrills, this bunch can sometimes carry their '60s-rooted sunshine populism to unfortunately bland extremes. The worst offender here is Jack Johnson-chillaxing "Undecided", which wastes a brassy lead vocal from multi-instrumentalist Angela Gannon. Stodart's plainspoken lyrics are, like their constant focus on love, a crucial part of the band's identity, but weaker tunes make the words seem threadbare. "I can't get over you," Michele Stodart sighs to string arrangements by Nick Drake orchestrator Robert Kirby on "Take Me or Leave Me", a plodding composition that tends toward the banal where the late folkie would've been elemental. The seven minutes of aptly titled "Slow Down (The Way It Goes)" drag the way The Magic Numbers' longest compositions didn't.
Such shortcomings aside, this release remains a modest improvement on last year's UK pressing. The new track list elides dreadful "Most of the Time", which was too similar to the far superior Dylan tune of the same name. Also gone is near-miss "Carl's Song". Their replacement, "Keep It in the Pocket", started life as a 2005 B-side; its breezy enthusiasm exhibits confidence if not transcendence. On Those the Brokes, the Magic Numbers have yet to shape their middlebrow yearning into a masterpiece on par with those of influences the Mamas and the Papas or the Band. Let's hope Astralwerks keeps letting them try.
