T
here is, in the lingo of neuroscience, a visual behavior called "bistability," where a person's perception of certain objects fluctuates over time. You remember the cool illusions from the backs of cereal boxes when you were a kid ? is it a vase or two faces? A young girl or an old woman? The drawings contain ambiguous visual cues, and your brain oscillates between alternative neural states, trying to make sense of the picture.
There's a style of music that I think works the same way, forcing your brain to oscillate between bliss and melancholy. Bittersweet. You listen to it, perhaps on a sunny day in those in-between seasons of autumn or spring, and everything feels perfect, and yet you know, simultaneously, that it's not.
When I think of bittersweet pop lately, I think of
Aberdeen. Their 2002 debut full-length album
Homesick and Happy To Be Here was one of the few CDs I discovered this year that I compulsively played over and over, so I was excited when they released a three-song follow-up EP in September,
The Boy Has Gone Away.
To be fair, Aberdeen wields a few qualities that get me every time: wistful, sweet, female vocals paired with wistful, sweet melodies. The vocals belong to Beth Arzy; the other half of the original Aberdeen core is John Girgus. Musically, lyrically, we're not talking complexity here — that's not the intent. What Aberdeen do best is write classic pop songs, in the best sense of the term, with a melodic awareness that hasn't been the norm in popular music since the '80s. But, as has been detailed elsewhere, the innocent melodies belie harsher lyrics, perhaps a better reflection of the band's tumultuous past. (From "Clouds Like These" on
Homesick :
I like the way your hazy eyes begin to sparkle / I liked you better with your trousers round your ankles.)
That past, quickly: Aberdeen forms in the early 90's and releases a single and two EPs between 1994 and 1995, at which point they break up. As the band's press materials explain, "don't join a band with a couple in it." Fortunately, the realization of the strength of their unreleased material eventually led to a professional reconciliation and, with the help of David Newton producing (of the former
Mighty Lemon Drops), Aberdeen released their first full-length album approximately 10 years after everything began.
And a year later, a new EP.
The Boy Has Gone Away lacks some of the delicate perfection of
Homesick. The sound is a bit fuller, the lyrics of the two original songs are a little more direct. But the gestation period was intentionally shorter — Aberdeen started as a 7" band, on a label (Sarah Records) famous for releasing 7"s, so releasing EPs with quick turnaround is a return to form, in a way.
The first two songs are originals. The third-person narration of the lively title track describes — what else — the aftermath of a relationship, while the first-person, slightly more down-tempo "Miss You Know You're Gone" describes the loneliness that follows someone leaving. The wording of the chorus is interesting: is she missing a friend? A boyfriend who happened to be a neighbor? Or a neighbor she never told her true feelings to?
The EP ends with a highly appropriate cover of
The Field Mice's "Emma's House." Stay with me for a moment: The Field Mice, a legendary cult Brit band from the late 80's-early 90's, which the All-Music guide says "now seems like the missing link between
The Smiths and
Belle & Sebastian," were the flagship band of the Sarah Records label, the singles-only label Aberdeen first released with. "Emma's House" was The Field Mice's debut single. After several cycles of permutation, The Field Mice are now essentially
Trembling Blue Stars, of which Arzy is now a member. So the cover choice resonates on several levels. The cover itself is a fairly straightforward retelling, which includes bringing the male vocals to the forefront for the first time that I've heard in an Aberdeen song.
If you're interested in discovering Aberdeen, start with
Homesick and Happy to Be Here. I can't recommend it enough. And
The Boy Has Gone Away is a excellent follow-up for those who fall under Aberdeen's spell.
