Slow Club is a little folk duo out of Sheffield, England signed to Moshi Moshi records. They do a lot with two people and while I'm sure production fills in the sound a bit, they pull off their louder songs with as much ease as their quieter material.
On their first full length,
Yeah, So? they layer male/female vocals together in a really retro but interesting duet style. What's nice about the way they do it though is that there isn't too much back and forth communicating. Instead they opt for the melding of the two voices and leave it at that.
They sound a bit like labelmates
Tilly And Wall, but when only when both singers, Charles Watson and Rebecca Taylor, sing in harmony. When Taylor is left by herself she sings a lot like fellow U.K. artist Kate Nash, in a very casual conversational way. Other vocalist Watson sometimes slips into a vocal pattern sort like the new weird thing Connor Oberst does, his "I wish I was a musician from 1880" voice. But still, both of Slow Club's voises blend nicely.
Yeah, So? is a pretty good look into what the band is after, the whole thing is quiet and brooding and each song builds to enough excitement to keep the album going. "I Was Unconcious, It Was A Dream", "Trophy Room", "Because We're Dead" and "Our Most Brilliant Friends" are definitely stand out tracks.
"Our Most Brilliant Friends" is a terrific closer to the album and actually is probably the best proof that Slow Club has a lot of depth under their simple he-and-she folk set-up. Clocking in at 10 minutes long, it builds and sinks and ends as such a great send-off for the album. If you have the 10 minutes, it's an incredible song.
They've, since
Yeah, So?, released a Christmas EP. And before their full length their first release was an EP titled
Let's Fall Back In Love.
The duo certainly has a lot of talent on their debut full length and hopefully they have enough to take it to another album. A few of their songs have been featured in commercials and their song "Christmas TV" was featured in an episode of
Chuck.
Slow Club plays like winter living room concert. At the quietest they're right next to you, at their loudest the house is shaking and either way it's a good time.-
Ryan Broderick
audio player
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Slow Club on Myspace