Toronto – I have always thought of Matt and Kim as an incessantly cheery version of the White Stripes. What? you ask. Well – female drummer and a guy guitarist/singer. Disregard the fact that they sound nothing alike, Any female drummer/guy drummer combination is going to bring comparisons to the Detroit duo. I guess they can be considered a more punky version of Mates of State if anything. Matt and Kim are an indie pop duo from Brooklyn..and in case you didn’t know they were from Brooklyn, a visit to their website will instantly tell you that they are from Brooklyn. Because Brooklyn is so damn cool. The Humphrey’s would agree.
As I mentioned before, Kim is the drummer and Matt is the guitarist/synth/vocalist guy. They always seem to be smiling. Look them up on google images. Always bloody smiling. Have you been with people who are always smiling? It’s annoying. I would not tell them this, because Kim looks like she can beat the crap out of me. January 20th saw the release of their second full length album – Grand. It is the follow up to their moderately successful self titled release in 2006. If Matt and Kim seem familiar to you, that is because you have probably heard their smash single ‘Yeah Yeah’ somewhere. It’s the one where the chorus is “yeah yeah, yeah yeah, yeah yeah yeah” which is the first time a hit single has featured a chorus with only one word repeated over and over again since “mmmm mmmm mmmm mmm” by the Crash Test Dummies. We all know what happened with them. I am actually completely shocked that “Yea Yeah” was not on an Apple commercial somewhere by now.
I’ll have to admit – on the first two listenings of Grand, all I could hear was different variations of the song “Yeah Yeah”. After much psychoanalysis, I decided that it was because the guy had such a distinctive voice and so I automatically compared it to the song I was most familiar with. With that mental block out of the way, I was able to fully appreciate this album. This is a good pop-punk albums – all the songs are three and a half minutes or less, carries a constant drum beat (a characteristic of any pop punk song) and carries a catchy hook. There is some good synth work in here as well – “Good o’ Fashion Nightmare” uses the synth to create an Asianish sound (what that is I don’t know, its just something I feel) and “Lessons Learned” uses the synth and Kim’s “da da da da da” background vocals to good use. Actually the more I lsten to this album, the more I notice the quality synth work. Way to use the 80s! While none of the songs has that instant infectious quality that “Yeah yeah” had, I dare say, that this album definitely sounds better as a whole – it’s more layered, has a more fuller sound and definitely didn’t sound as raw or cheaply produced as the debut did.
3.78/5
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