What redeems it: This is the second time I've defended a piece of music that I actually believe needs no defense at all -- but while "Handlebars" by The Flobots is arguably a serious and potentially disturbing song (it always gives me chills) as well as technically flawless, "Lessons Learned" is just plain fun, and the messy kind.
Like all of Matt & Kim's music, "Lessons Learned" is sung by Matt and features only the instruments played and music created by Matt & Kim, two Brooklynites (transplanted there, like all Brooklynites) who decided to start a band with that DIY small-things-are-important ethic that practically defines Brooklyn these days...or at least defines its artisanal foodie culture.
In concert, Matt plays keyboard and Kim plays drums. On their sophomore album, "Grand," though, their production is much more layered and complex than in their previous work and than in their necessarily stripped-down concerts.
True to their aesthetic and Brooklyny ways, Matt & Kim produced the album in Matt's old bedroom in Vermont.All these details are important to understanding what makes the unfettered enthusiasm and joy of Matt & Kim's music so appealing.
It also contextualizes the All-Girl-Summer-Fun-Band-like "messiness" of their instrument-playing and production, the overextension of Matt's voice and the tendency to put Kim's drum-playing on overdrive. It explains why Matt harmonizing with himself is not quite perfect, and yet all the more electrifying. These are the imperfections and flaws in your hand-blown glass one-of-a-kind artifact from the third-world country you've chosen to patronize -- minus the guilt of buying from the third world, where your artisan earns pennies a day.
These are the marks of a genuine product. Except for housewares sold at Target, you can't find this kind of idiosyncrasy in the corporate world, making it all the more fascinating and charming, here.
So the voices that begin "Lessons Learned," likely Kim's, that don't harmonize quite perfectly, that don't quite hit the notes you think they're probably trying for, in this context, are invigorating rather than off-putting: And Matt & Kim have a knack for being a bit off without putting you off. (They know where to draw the line on being off key, for instance.)
And by the time you reach the chorus, something crazy has happened. They've managed to make a song out of the sounds you'd been hearing as relatively spare, the sum of separate parts.
“And so I stayed up all night
Slept in all day
This is my sound
Thinking ‘bout tomorrow won’t change how I feel today”
Matt & Kim's songs are always manic in exactly the way you'd want a band made up of a keyboard player and drummer to be manic. Add a few more instruments, another voice to the one-singer-at-a-time harmonies in "Lessons Learned" or other songs on "Grand," and it would be overwhelming and oppressively heavy. As it is, Matt and Kim manage in their best songs to invoke the feeling of an impending spring, or the desperate joy of cramming in those last hours of fun in the fall before winter hits.
They’re great songs for driving on the highway with the windows down – great songs for driving to something rather than away from it. This is part of what makes Matt & Kim post-punk rather than plain punk. (The themes they sing about, which are almost relentlessly positive, are another part.)
The genius of "Grand," and in particular of "Lessons Learned," unlike the genius of the barebones approach of their self-titled debut album – which sounded like it had been produced by elves set loose in a factory, with its frenetic and big-open-space/exposed-brick-and-pipe sense of energy – is the use of layering in production.
The songs sound richer than their previous "Yea Yeah" and "It's a Fact," and the build-up to their more lyrically complex choruses is superbly done. Yet the mixing puts all the sound on one level, making each element sound equally important – making it sound, in fact, like a wall of sound, industrial and almost inescapable.
The elves have learned how to use the machines, in other words, and are busy making whatever elves make.
Cookies, probably.
Even destruction and apparent apathy in Matt & Kim songs seems creative: In "Daylight," the singer doesn't pick up the phone because everywhere feels like home; in "I'll Take You Home," he's going to take the blinds down from his window, but only so he can see the light better. Every time they destroy something in true-punk fashion, Matt & Kim create something new and better from it – in true Brooklyn artisan fashion.
They just seem to be determined-to-be-happy people.
This will cause one of two reactions, at least in most New Englanders: longing for the same, or loathing.
For those who loathe happiness, I can't say anything to convince you that this album deserves a shot.
For those who wish they were happy, too, there's Matt & Kim.
The equivalent of 5 kittens
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