The cross-pollination between indie pop and laptop IDM continues. It was an inevitable junction, really, as the aesthetic values and fanbases of these worlds have so much overlap. But it's everywhere now. The abstract laptoppers are incorporating vocals and remixing pop artists; the indie rockers have IDM side projects.
On its first album, Music A.M. is finds itself in the midst of this fertile ground. The band is new but the players have been around. Luke Sutherland, who used to front the Too Pure bands Long Fin Killie and Bows (and now plays violin for Mogwai), sings and plays guitar. Volker Bertelmann is on keyboards and computers, and Stefan Schneider, the driving force behind To Rococo Rot, contributes bass and synth. They're an exceptionally quiet and cozy ensemble that fuses post-rock instrumental interplay and glitchy, spare electronics into well-crafted songs.
They're also one of those perfectly named bands. On a rainy Sunday with a thick New York Times to get through, all I need is a pot of black coffee and music that sounds like A Heart & Two Stars. Sam Prekop's solo album is an acoustic record for this mood, but Music A.M. comes from gurgly circuitry. It reminds me a bit of Tortoise's TNT, with a side of pop structure and minus the jazzy runs. Sutherland's guitar is plucked as his lines wind around the melody, Bertelmann trades out percussion for rustles, clicks and pops, and Schneider is instantly indefinable as he smothers it all in an electric blanket of bass and synth chords. There's a ton of space and the instruments continually reference the tune at hand in some way. And the vocals, despite being quietly half-sung by Sutherland, are surprisingly melodic.
Of course, post-rock bands have been whispering their way through the occasional song since the early 90s, and so often it seemed a cop-out, the only signal a tone-deaf vocalist could broadcast. But Music A.M. get the technique right. The quality of Sutherland's lyrics helps immensely, requiring more attention than one usually grants music this soft. His lyrical skill shouldn't come as a surprise since he's taken time off music to publish one well-received novel (1998's Jelly Roll) and has written another, but it's unusual to hear words so clear and evocative in this setting.
Rather than hiding behind opacity or Grubbsian wordplay, Sutherland's words are direct. He can be a storyteller in the Aidan Moffat mode as easily as he delivers absurd haiku. "Black Flash" is like a grainy dream as it tells the story of a downtrodden professional wrestler who, while pinned to the canvas, catches a glimpse of his brutal long-lost father in the audience. "Bit Wheel" compresses its narrative into a series of three-word lines that start as banal as possible ("boy meets girl") and end fantastical, as estranged lovers roll through town suspended atop a runaway Ferris wheel.
About half the tracks on A Heart & Two Stars are instrumental, and I heard and enjoyed the record a dozen times before the words registered at all. It's fresh and balanced and easy to like right away. But it's also rabbit hole of a record, inviting you to inch a little closer until you find yourself enveloped in a strange and exciting world. Those kinds of records tend to have staying power.
