Au Revoir Simone - (2009) Still Night, Still Light 2x10''

When it comes to decorum, Brooklyn's Au Revoir Simone makes Judith Martin look like Don Rickles. They have three voices, three keyboards, and a drum machine in their arsenal, yet each element stands out from the gleaming propulsion with razored precision, as if the band were constantly saying, "No, after you." They deliver inspirational-kitten-calendar platitudes that would make Whitney Houston blush with disarming directness, their plain yet dulcet voices arranged in fussy group harmony-- excessive melisma being, after all, simply immodest. The band's egalitarian and mutually supportive dynamic pays off on the harmonious Still Night, Still Light, their third and best album. It's feather-light electro-pop that's not to be taken lightly.

As always, the music is utterly innocent of abrasion, dissonance, and chance-- everything is clamped down so tightly that the unstinting pertness seems neurotic; the insistence on letting go, moving on, and being who you are a "doth protest too much" kind of thing. You start to wonder what sort of roiling emotional bedlam all of this chipper well-being is keeping at bay. Yet the starchy sincerity keeps things merrily ambiguous, and politeness saturates the lyrics as well as the music. "Only You Can Make You Happy" feels like stumbling into the daily affirmation part of a group-therapy session, were it sung in a melting madrigal over lazily scudding synthesizers.