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New York-based all-female electronic band Au Revoir Simone,
formed in 2003 by Erika Forster and Annie Hart and later joined by Heather D'Angelo (all vocalists and keyboardists),
updated
Hugo Largo's dream-pop for the digital age.
Verses Of Comfort, Assurance & Salvation (Moshi Moshi, 2005) excels
at the introspective dejection of
fragile whispered elegies like Back in Time (over tenuous synth drones and lo-fi machine beats) and gentle lullabies like And Sleep Al Mar.
It is synth-pop's alter-ego: not the grand arias and pounding beats, but an urgent state of mind, like a cross between a less intellectual Galaxie 500 and a less futuristic Human League.
The electronic arrangements are humble but incredibly effective, like
how the synth simulates a wavering street organ and a chamber violin in the somber Stay Golden
or how two rhythms collide in the delicious instrumental Winter Song, the drum-machine spinning a quasi-flamenco while the synth evokes a ticking clock.
The vocal interplay is also often humbly creative, like in the
liquified gospel chant of Disco Song.
There is a childish element to the proceedings, most visible in the effervescent complex rhythm and
nursery-rhyme melody of
Hurricanes.
The poppy Where You Go feels like a shy version of the Supremes.
This domestic electronica, that did not try to envision the future but simply to encapsulate the present, was grounded on graceful counterpoint of both vocals and keyboards.
The Bird Of Music (Moshi Moshi, 2007) is a less ambitious affair.
The dreamy melancholy state of mind is not the pillar but relegated to
a secondary role, despite charming results like
The Lucky One (a bucolic trance-like overture),
the symphonic elegy Lark
and especially
Fallen Snow (whose synths hijack the riff and march-like drumbeat of the Beach Boys' Good Vibration).
Almost flamboyant songs like the dreamy ballad Stars, the solemn The Way to There which lasts almost seven minutes and the orchestral melodrama A Violent Yet Flammable World betray the desire to appeal to the general audience, but they mostly fall flat.
The
pounding dance-pop of Dark Halls and Night Majestic is hardly
the trio's specialty, but
Sad Song does indeed do some magic with
an upbeat Neu-esque "motorik" beat.
Still Night, Still Light (Moshi Moshi, 2009), produced by Thom Monahan with a stronger emphasis on dance beats, again fails to resuscitate the charm of the first album.
The almost hysterical rhythms of Knight Of Wands and Anywhere You Looked hardly suit their melodies.
There are plenty of second-rate self-imitations (Another Likely Story, The Last One) but only one is truly catchy: Trace a Line.
The two songs that stand out are the ones with the strangest arrangements:
the exuberant and ecstatic Only You Can Make You Happy, like Laurie Anderson playing French folk,
and in which an expansive aria and triumphant synth is grafted onto Neu's motorik beat.
The production totally disfigured their sound on
Move in Spectrums (2013).
Songs like More Than and Gravitron
belong to the lineage of Madonna and Lady Gaga
and sound vulgar in the trio's repertory, and songs like
Crazy are bombastic just for the sake of being fashionable.
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