Like we expected earlier this year, The Art Museums are all geared up to be one of the first band’s to steal some hype from the hypnagogic, beach fetish-centered state of music with their dressed-down anglophile pop jams. Sitting pretty on the keen eyed Brooklyn label Woodsist, the Bay Are duo will unveil their debut ‘mini-LP’ Rough Frame to the public today. In just under half an hour, Josh Alper and Glenn Donaldson (of Skygreen Leopards) filter 9 tracks of urgently mundane tales of cads, mods, and lovers through a crunchy Tascam 388 tape machine. Along the way, they tap into thirty-odd years of pop music, amalgamating the gentle angst of Television Personalities, the pastel-colored mannerisms of the New Wave, and the bare-boned song writing prowess of the early K Records scene. As such, the results are mixed. The paper thin drum machine is only there to carry the rhythm section, which in turn is immediately buried by duo’s harmonies, shifting all the grunt work onto the shoulders of the song’s vocal melody.

Occasionally, that strategy works out just fine, like on the lead-off singles “Sculpture Gardens” and “Paris Cafes” which burrow their catchy verses so deep inside your head that you completely overlook the fact that you’re tapping along to what sounds like Peter Gabriel fronting the Magnetic Fields. Problem is, after those immediate fixes, the other 15 minutes of this album sound comparatively uninspired. That aside, they still get points for not hiding behind an ocean of reverb, proving that whatever moments of glory they achieve are won by craftsmanship and not some cheap post-production solution. Rough Frame‘s end result sounds like it was untouched from it’s original form as a demo, and it reaps the pros and cons you would expect. It’s eager, fresh, and un-calculated, but it also feels like it was peeled a little before it was ripe enough to do so.

Rough Frame is available here.

MP3 :::
Art Museums – Sculpture Gardens
Art Museums – Paris Cafes