French Kicks
In their ten years together to date, French Kicks have never failed to find new ways of brightening and enlivening anew their erudite pop aesthetic. The group began in Washington, DC before moving to New York City with the eager, careening post-punk sound heard on their first two EPs, 1999's French Kicks and 2001's Young Lawyer. By the time of their 2002 debut album One Time Bells, they'd tempered this energy into a surprising and lovely new shape: a sleek, chiming pop anomaly that, in the years and records since, has always surprised and never bent to scene expectations.
Singing and songwriting are split between multi-instrumentalist Nick Stumpf and guitarist Josh Wise, who have continually showcased a shared knack for conjuring the sublime, as with the airy keyboard-guitar riff of "England Will Just Not Let You Recover" from 2006's Two Thousand or the sighing beauty of "Abandon", the opening cut on last year's Swimming, their fourth full-length album. It's their first record to be totally self-recorded and produced, employing mostly first and second takes for a set of songs that bristles with a rough-edged intensity. The Wise-led "Said So What" exemplifies what wonders the Kicks work, given this looser, spacious approach—a quiet bossa nova snap-along veers into a rousing chorus and summer-bummer Beach Boys-styled verses.
Their newest release is the digital Covers EP, a four-song set featuring off-the-cuff renditions of songs by the Ramones, Lindsey Buckingham, the Shirelles, and Colin Blunstone of the Zombies. It's an absolute treat, bringing the crackling live immediacy of Swimming to quiet, inspired choices that reflect the more cerebral turn the band has taken over their last couple of albums. As Covers and their two live sessions thus far for Daytrotter.com make clear, a unique melodic strain courses through their veins and they're a band whose gifts ought not to be missed live. MICHAEL HARKIN
