Release Date: June 21, 2011
There’s an interesting distinction in the perception of “couple” bands. While The White Stripes are certainly the outlier here—because for a great while many people believed they were siblings rather than a divorced couple, bands that contain happy marriages are always a bit weird to view lyrically. The Weepies, Mates of State, even Régine Chassagne and Win Butler of Arcade Fire all possess this dynamic—a slight bit of context to inform the band’s worldview. Bodies of Water and their core members David and Meredith Metcalf have this same context, filtered through a heavy bit of dark ’70s Laurel Canyon folk-pop. Their third LP, Twist Again, is a slight trinket of propulsive Sunshine State AM pop, building upon the Metcalfs’ strange connectivity in aurally pleasing ways.
Which is not to say that Bodies of Water don’t get sufficiently weird along the way, lyrically. Both Metcalfs turn phrases that seem a bit antiquated, even for their mildly retro musical sensibility, trending almost toward New Testament verbosity and worrying about the oncoming apocalypse, even if that distress is flung off in favor of energetic Scooby-Doo keyboard pop (the transition from “New Age Nightmares” to “In Your Thrall Again”). Bodies of Water are best when they’re revving their engines, as opposed to the alternative of slowing down and turning into Cass McCombs-lite. David Metcalf seems most often to blame for Twist Again’s lackadaisical moments, contributing both “Nightmares” and “My Hips Won’t Let Me,” which both bring in a bit too much of the minstrelsy that ’70s folk-poppers thought was so interesting at the time.
But when the Metcalfs rev up, they can really get their motors running. An inventive and intelligent knowledge of percussion and the things that work best as backbeat make songs like “Like A Stranger” and “Mary, Don’t You Weep” more than blandly innocuous folk-pop songs.
“Mary, Don’t You Weep” sounds remarkably close to ABBA, were ABBA less focused on disco and more on gold-coast ennui. “Stranger” is a better example using bass clef piano as the primary percussion, letting syncopated drums and Zombies-esque guitar work play lead along with the Metcalfs’ stony romanticism.
These romps also help mask the ambiguity and slack meaninglessness of Bodies of Water’s verse. “Triplets” and “In Your Thrall Again” are so sneakily well-arranged that you have the ability to forget that, like The Weepies and Mates of State, this couple doesn’t have much to say. Their better tracks are about the power of music to enrapture an audience and capture hearts and minds, while the slower tracks meander around notions of unrequited love and misty metaphor. In the end, Bodies of Water are most easily judged by their opening track, “One Hand Loves the Other,” which deftly combines both intricate arrangements and an evocative story. Whichever element you take most strongly from “One Hand” will be the element that guides you through a fairly satisfying, if sometimes scattershot and lazy, third effort from this clever and intelligent couple.
Bodies Of Water – Twist Again
- “One Hand Loves the Other”
- “Triplets”
- “Mary, Don’t You Weep”
- “Open Rhythms”
- “Rise Up, Careful”
- “Ever With Us”
- “Like A Stranger”
- “Lights Out Forever”
- “New Age Nightmare”
- “In Your Thrall Again”
- “My Hip Won’t Let Me”
- “You Knew Me So Well”
