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You may have seen or heard about The Brunettes opening for The Shins on their Spring 2005 U.S. tour. That's a pretty high-profile gig for these playful New Zealand popsters. The core of the group is Jonathan Bree (who is also chief of Lil' Chief) and Heather Mansfield, who are a couple as well as a duo. A large cast of supporters provides strings, horns, and la-las on these recordings.
The disc art is an homage to The Modern Lovers' classic self-titled album, and The Brunettes' love of all things Jonathan Richman shows most obviously in the tracks "Loopy Loopy Love" and "The Record Store" (with its talk of "girlfriends" and "affection"). The group's debt to Mr. Richman's influence also shows in their lyrical penchant for casual autobiography and gentle satire. Their sonic influences continue tracing back in time a little further to The Velvet Underground on "Polyester Meets Acetate," which also has some Byrdsy elements; slightly further back to the "White Album" with "Whale in the Sand," which has an "Ob-La-Di" kind of vibe (plus monkey sounds); and then further back still to Phil Spector girl-groups with the reverby production on other tracks. It's a lo-fi retro pop sound which should be familiar to fans of Saturday Looks Good to Me.
The best moments on the disc are provided by the conversational back-and-forth lyrical and vocal interplay between Bree and Mansfield, which hits its peak on the final track, "Your Heart Dies," a song which contains the following awesome, perfectly-delivered lyric: "I could be as faithful as a seahorse / and if you were a marine biologist / you'd know how tender that line was." This album is cute and charming, but, for the most part, fairly inconsequential—except that it has some little flashes of brilliance like that which occasionally kick things up to a higher level. (mike.09.05)
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