Search The Line of Best Fit
Search The Line of Best Fit

"Post-Everything"

Release date: 03 March 2014
7/10
Weeknight – Post-Everything
26 February 2014, 11:30 Written by Stephen Jenkins
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There’s nothing particularly interesting about Weeknight. They’re a man and a woman from New York, they wish to simply be known as Holly and Andy, their band name is about as exciting as a Thursday evening in front of the telly, and their debut LP – the apocalyptically boringly named Post-Everything - is branded as ‘a sort of languid, obfuscous pop.’ Which, according to a dictionary, is a mildly non-boring way of saying that it’s ‘boring’ and ‘boring’.

But sometimes boring is just fine, especially when it sounds this good. Despite first impressions, Weeknight manage to encapsulate all the groovy moodiness of recent American gloom rockers on Post-Everything. The duo boss that same male-female vocal chemistry that saw Mosshart and Hince rise to prominence with The Kills, they boast a lyrical glumness that could rival the likes of Matt Berninger and Paul Banks, and in turns they are as melodiously miserable as The National and as sublimely macabre as Interpol.

If by ‘languid, obfuscous pop’ they mean ‘lazy and shadowy’ then Weeknight do kind of have a point. This is pop music on its weekend comedown, wallowing around in its pyjamas with the curtains drawn, sensitive to bright hues and irritable to loud banging noises. Opening song “Hallowed Ground” wakes up bleary eyed to the sounds of a sonorous synth organ and heartbeat drum pulses over which dual vocals croon “I’ve been asleep for years it seems… my petulance is killing me” before splitting knives of of discordant synths are the harbinger of the hangover headache.

The ethereal interplay between guitars and electronic keys is what really bolsters this well produced album. The belly churning gravity shifts of “Tonight” are achieved through guitars that interchangeably plummet and hurtle toward the underlying synth track and then rise in great waves of sheeny guitar strums. On the albums most solemnly high, the seductively grim “Dark Light”, synths dance elegantly on top of guitars that are buried under a thicket of quaggy distortion.

While this instrumental battle for prominence takes place, Holly and Andy provide an unwavering constancy with understated yet beautifully arranged vocal harmonies. Which is all good and well; you would expect nothing less. But after an albums worth of droning on in the same key about hearts and love and feelings and stuff, even the most hapless of romantics might urge you to lighten the fuck up.

Cynicism aside, Weeknight’s heartbreak sentimentalities on Post-Everything are never mawkish or saccharine and they make a worthy case to provide the fitting soundtrack those lonely Monday nights you spend alone in a darkened room trying to suppress all the guilty memories of dancing a bit too over-vigorously to cheesy pop music at the weekend. If nothing else, they are perceptibly cool enough, and audibly miserable enough to redress that inner balance.

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