Blanche Blanche Blanche

No effects, EQ or noise reduction were used in the making of this album, the fifth by this fantastic Brattleboro duo. Sarah Smith and Zach Phillips (aka Bruce Hart, Jordan Piper Philips, Nals Goring, etc.) assemble mostly keyboard-oriented skeletal pop gems from the softest imaginable bones. Sarah Smith sings like a torchier version of the Young Marble Giants' Allison Stratton, singing lost fragments from the Randy Newman Songbook. Smith's guitar playing seems effortless but planned out with a true heart. It's an incredible combination that always pulls itself back from the brink of potential cutesy-pieness with genuinely unexpected moves and a fully brilliant manner of constructing songs. A surrealist cocktail masterpiece from the upper reaches of the Connecticut River Valley.