There's something creepy about the Brunettes' music, and it's hard to tell whether it's entirely intentional. The most obviously unnerving thing about the duo is its vocal dynamic: Jonathan Bree has a droll, modestly handsome voice that brings to mind a bookish dude in his thirties, and Heather Mansfield is chirpy, perky, and seldom sounds a day over 14. Mansfield's little-girl act is a deliberate affectation, and their music is very much part of a long tradition of twee indie pop that knowingly mingles adult sexuality with a playful, innocent tone. This is very self-aware music, but nevertheless it gets kinda tricky to figure out when the Brunettes are making the subtext in the contrast of their voices the hook of their music, or when they're just doing cutesy songs for the sake of it.
The age dynamic isn't the only unusual tension on the Auckland, New Zealand-based duo's fourth album, Paper Dolls. As on their previous records, their compositions strike an odd balance of child-like singsong simplicity and subtle sophistication. Any time the group start to sound overly naive and artless, there is some kind of musical curveball thrown in to keep things from getting too flat and predictable. You wouldn't want to call any of these tracks complex, but Bree and Mansfield consistently add welcome dimension to songs that could easily come across as dumb and fluffy. This is a good thing, but the negative side effect is that this tendency flattens out the tone of the record as a whole. As much as whimsical tracks like "Red Rollerskates" and "In Colours" benefit from a bit of musical depth, the relatively mature electronic aesthetics of "Bedroom Disco" and "Connection" get muffled by their insistence on being adorable, making those songs sound like a preschool version of Broadcast circa Tender Buttons. Even the most enjoyable tracks here are cloying, and their best ideas are just things we've heard before in an indie marketplace choked with the twee sensibility.
To be clear, there's nothing wrong with being cute, and the Lolita thing is generally done in interesting rather than off-putting ways. The problem with Paper Dolls is that, even though the Brunettes have set up some potentially intriguing contrasts, they never fully investigate the tensions in their music. "If I", a corny ballad near the end of the album, has Mansfield talking down to Bree's schmaltzy sentimentality-- "If I should accidentally die and leave you much too soon, would you play and sing our songs the same with somebody new?"-- but that's as close as they come to subverting their dynamic, or even commenting on it in an overt way. It may be unfair to complain that a band is not sufficiently meta, but all the same, this is self-consciously clever music that is too shy to make any sort of point. These songs, especially "Magic (No Bunny)" and the Bis-esque "The Crime Machine", can work on a superficial level, but there's really not much else here. Bree and Mansfield have perfected their style, but they've come up very short on content.
