Yes, I know everyone likes the touchy, precious, ambient stuff that Claire Rousay releases every 3-4 months. I know a lot of people think that's cool. It is cool. It's just not the kind of cool that I'm into right now. Do you want to know what I do think is cool right now? Unrepentant pop music. You know what else is cool (always, forever)? Friendship. We all get by with a little help from our friends, as the song goes. That and sick tunes. Besides Sgt. Pepper's, is there any place where the two shall rendezvous? I'm going to hazard a yes. Because if I'm wrong that I have no idea how Never Stop Texting Me could exist.
Friends, and musicians, Claire and Mari "More Eaze" Maurice have unlocked dimensions of their individual talents in ways that are unexpectedly spectacular on Never Stop Texting Me. I'm not trying to draw unnecessary comparisons, but it exceeds anything they've done on their own, or together, previously. And they have me in their hands as a result, like I was their pet. As if they are scratching me right under the chin like I was some oafish but adorable stray that approached them looking for scraps. Now excuse me while I tuck my pride away (Ha! As if), and gush about this record for a bit.
I was hooked by Never Stop Texting Me as soon as the song "hands" got a grip on me. It begins with a grandly understated guitar downstroke, a post-punky throwback that sets the tone for the song and its shy romanticism. This guitar motif is later developed by increasingly hot solo exhibitions and crisp, crackling grooves, each recurrence acting like a mile marker for the dreamy, melodic sweeps that coalesce like a cotton candy chemtrail at the song's core. It's exhilarating- like the first time your parents heard Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" or you encountered The Knife's "Heartbeats." And amazingly, the duo are able to bridge the differences between these two eras of sound together in a confounding synthesis of sonic polarity and exuberant effect.
While "hands" has more of a vignette-like structure, Never Stop Texting Me is most notable for its flowy consistency, aiming for big builds and payoffs on songs like "kyle," which has all the flavor and tantalizing tactlessness of a champagne bubble bath, and prolonged sections of reverie like the tiny field orchestra ballad "art." Their use of studio effects to augment Claire and Mari's voices strikes that flawless invitation quality of being intriguing and playfully approachable without succumbing to cloying or obnoxious cliches, and can often be found rising out of the grooves of synths and slightly diverting samples like a Wisteria Tree embedded in a custom flower bed constructed out of decarded laptops and spools of fiberoptic ligatures.
Never Stop Texting Me is the pair's strangest but undeniably most traditional record, defying the barriers of expectations through an enveloping encounter with the familiar. Bloodz Boi and How To Dress Well even show up to help push these intractable constellations of texture and sound to their proper celestial heights. It's improbable how perfectly compelling it all is, but that's the power of friendship for you.*
Never Stop Texting is on Orange Milk.
