Where Your Heart Goes When You Die

Slow Club “Two Cousins”

Slow Club have shifted up their style on their second album Paradise, mainly by dialing down the overwhelming tweeness that marked their often exceptional male-female indie folk duets. They still harmonize throughout the record, but for the most part, Rebecca Taylor sings lead while Charles Watson focuses his energy on filling up negative space with ambiance, texture and instrumental harmonies. This was a very good idea. The best moments on their debut Yeah So came when Taylor would break out of tight harmonies with Watson to provide soulful, expressive emotional peaks to standout tracks “Giving Up On Love” and “Trophy Room.”

“Two Cousins,” the first single from Paradise, signals the break from the band’s earlier aesthetic. The arrangement is densely rhythmic and heavy on treble, with a sharp keyboard riff that seems to across the song in a diagonal motion. The treble crowds out Taylor’s voice at some points, but it’s thrilling when she cuts through it, as if she is emoting her way through a wall of bright notes. As always, she’s very good at conveying a wounded sadness – in this case, it’s something about the way she sings the words “I look into your eyes / you don’t know who I am.”

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