The pairing of pop-rock singer-songwriter Andy Kim and Broken Social Scene's Kevin Drew is so obviously peculiar that David Letterman wasted precious intro seconds making an "Odd Couple" joke when he presented Kim and Drew's live performance. You can forgive yourself if Kim's name isn't familiar: He was a minor but persistent radio presence during the late '60s and early '70s, and he's most known for co-writing the Archies' novelty hit "Sugar Sugar" and for "Rock Me Gently", the type of innocuous AM trifles you're most likely in 2015 to hear as comedic relief in a Judd Apatow movie (or in a commercial trading on that same aesthetic). Kim had several lesser, similar hits before going dark for several years, releasing some music as Baron Longfellow, and finally returning under his own name in 2004. (He was coaxed out of retirement by the Barenaked Ladies' Ed Robertson, which suggests that Kim is a much bigger deal in Canada than in the US.)
It's Decided resurrects material from both writers' pasts in addition to new songs, and while the promise of marrying Kim's featherweight pop sensibilities with Drew's glowing orchestration is intriguing, the result mostly scans as "pleasant rock music" and nothing more. Kim has a metered, handsome baritone; it's the voice of an old showman, smoothed by singing "Rock Me Gently" to moms and grandmoms at innumerable county fairs and casinos. Drew, less excitable here than on BSS records, decorates the tracks with well-pruned horn charts and little keyboard doilies. The whole operation is very mature and artistic—see also Kim's man-in-black routine on the album cover—such that no one could ever confuse Kim with a man who sang some hokey songs many years ago.
Kim and Drew are both artists capable of making you cringe, albeit for wholly different reasons: Kim for his cornball pop instincts and Drew for his bombast. You can hear some of Drew's puerile fascinations in the lyrics to "Heaven Without a Gun", just as you can spot Kim's lingering populism in the duo's re-working of "Shoot 'Em Up Baby", a doo-wop trifle Kim wrote in 1968. On BSS castoff "Who Came First", both Drew and Kim seem less tethered to pop-rock tradition, to more favorable results. Elsewhere, the results sound something like the National. What it all adds up to is anyone's guess. Is this a reclamation project? No one seems to be suggesting Kim's catalog is buried treasure. For better and for worse, there is nothing cringe-inducing on It's Decided; the record mostly sounds like I should remember to tip my barista.
