It’s not really fair for intangibles to play such a big role in bands getting over, but they do. The Klittens are followers of a few well-worn niche traditions — they do brittle post-punk in the style of the Raincoats, they do guitar squalls in the style of Sonic Youth — but they carry them off with such a sense of weirdo confidence that it sets them apart from groups doing very, very similar things. They write clever songs and they’re cool, basically. That has always been a killer combination.
The Amsterdam quintet’s second EP ‘Butter’ is both breezily accessible and structurally exacting, squaring its indie-pop base with melodic swerves and unexpected instrumental washes, from no wave-style sax to stabbing guitars. Throughout, vocalist Yaël Dekker darts between Dry Cleaning-esque talk-sing wit, sweeping hooks and needling philosophical questions, switching into pop mode on a dime to twist ‘Universal Experience’’s skipping chorus into an unusual shape mid-sentence.
At the heart of the five-song release is the knotty ‘Eye Contact’, where Michelle Geraerts’ grinding, fuzz-doused bass bleeds out from beneath Katja Kahana and Winnie Conradi’s guitars, which grow more muscular and biting as the seconds slip away. Its ringing opening riff deliberately evokes the picked intros to the preceding three songs before ditching the plan and collapsing into feedback, the long-teased arrival of drummer Laurie Zantinge signalling a noisy shift in priorities that continues with the abrasive ‘Traffic Light’.
“I’m about to make some real life choices based on some real dark scenarios / And I’m inviting you to prove me wrong,” Dekker sings as the guitars chop and change, with Kahana and Conradi pointedly finding melody even as they dial up the aggro. It’s a superb note to end on and a great endorsement for considered sequencing even in short-form releases.
In five songs and 15 minutes or so, The Klittens tell you who they are and what they do while also signalling their desire to go somewhere different almost immediately. Very clever. Very cool.
