Hometown: Malmö, Sweden.
The lineup: Marleen Nilsson, Anders Hansson and Magnus Bodin.
The background: Last week saw the sad passing of the great Michael Brown, the largely unsung genius behind the Left Banke. We thought it only right and proper, for this week’s slot, to try and find, in his honour, a new band operating in that rarefied Brown realm of late-60s baroque/psychedelic harmony pop. And here they are: Death and Vanilla – who may or may not have acquired that sobriquet from a hipster band-name generator – put baroque pop through a 90s dreampop filter. Their music variously recalls the eerie, haunted ambience of Angelo Badalamenti/Julee Cruise’s Twin Peaks soundtrack, Stereolab/Broadcast’s experimental vision of 50s lounge muzak/exotica and French 60s pop, or the narcotic country-noir of Mazzy Star. That’s when they’re just being excellent. They really take off on tracks such as Time Travel, when they use their panoply of vibraphones, organs, tremolo guitars, Moogs and Mellotrons, harpsichords and wind chimes in the service of classic pop.
Their new album, To Where the Wild Things Are, titled after the Maurice Sendak children’s book, is creepily lovely. It’s music for twilit forests or beautiful nightmares. The band produced and recorded the album themselves in a rehearsal space using only one microphone, a vintage Sennheiser from the 70s, and an old library record – “Where,” they explain, “one of the tracks was just someone playing single notes on a harpsichord, and we sampled each note and built melodies from that. The notes were slightly out of tune, but we thought it sounded good anyways.” Add the aforementioned instrumentation and the whispered cries of Marleen Nilsson, and you’ve got one of the albums of the year so far.
What separates this from generic shoegaze or goth-tinged drone rock are the tricksiness of the compositions and intricacy of the arrangements. Necessary Distortions sounds like Dusty, not in Memphis but in Detroit, with the Stooges in 73. The Optic Nerve has the breathy splendour and psych swirliness of Fifth Dimension or Free Design if they were on drugs, which we’re sure they weren’t. Arcana has the heartbeat bassline you’ll recognise from many a mid-60s recording, very possibly courtesy of Carol Kaye. Hidden Reverse is more garagey, more Velvets than Velvelettes, if you catch our drift. Follow the Light moves at a Walk Away Renee pace. The flugelhorns may be in short supply, but it feels like baroque pop, and feel is everything. Time Travel is total classic pop revisited, to the extent that if you told us it was a Left Banke B-side we wouldn’t blink. Somewhere, Michael Brown is smiling and sighing.
The buzz: “Lush and enveloping, reminiscent of Curt Boettcher and Margo Guryan” – The Wire.
The truth: Music for pretty ballerinas.
Most likely to: Walk away.
Least likely to: Play Wild Thing.
What to buy: New album To Where the Wild Things Are is released by Fire on 4 May.
File next to: Curt Boettcher, Michael Brown, Strawberry Switchblade, Free Design.
Links: facebook.com/pages/Death-And-Vanilla.
Ones to watch: Secaina Hudson, Michael Christmas, Stalin Majesty, The Corner Laughers, Fickle Friends.
