The Postmarks
The Postmarks
Unfiltered
Swinging lounge sounds? More like swinging from the door frame by a noose. The Postmarks are fucking ace because they take both the elegant groove of their Bacharach-ornate tunes and the doomed heartbreak of their lyrics to terminal extremes. So you have smooth horns, syrupy string arrangements and Merseybeat guitars gently buoying and propping up chanteuse Tim Yehezkely’s utterly desolate words. She handles the vocals in a sort of breathy early Marianne Faithful, chanson kinda way, while pop archaeologists Christopher Moll and Jon Wilkins craft their orchestral maneuvers in the dark that flutter and waltz with swooning preciseness, without being overly chirpy or kitschy. The Bacharach/Herb Alpert Jesus-that’s-smooth arrangements of Moll and Wilkins should be soundtracking the life of a cocktail party – instead it’s playing mockingly on the old hi-fi while a shaking hand clutches a bottle of pills… down the hatch!
Hermetically sealed and hidden behind timeless sounds and fine cuts, the Postmarks touch nothing and nothing touches them. They describe their cloistered conditions for music-making as a heartbreak factory; I find that notion unbearably romantic. The sound of the Postmarks is not of this age, it’s altogether more lush and beautifully stoic, in a kind of drink yourself to death in a penthouse suite kind of way. The very musical personification of quiet desperation or the taste of disappointment in the back of your mouth when you realize you hate everyone around you, but you have to keep smiling, because this party isn’t going to end anytime soon.
Nice throwback design on the sleeve too. Not a detail missed. Oh and they’re from Florida too? My martini n’ xanax doth runneth over!
Unfiltered Records: http://www.unfilteredrecords.com
