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Wednesday, January 27, 2010

The Brunettes - Paper Dolls

New Zealand's The Brunettes are Jonathan Bree and Heather Mansfield and their fourth album sees them deliver boy/girl duets over plinky-plonky electro. In Paper Dolls' better moments, it comes across like Belle and Sebastian with a laptop, but sometimes the lyrics, vocals and twinkly instrumentation are just too sickly. Even when the word-play is interesting, the niceness it's sheathed in is more than a little grating and the whole boy/girl thing soon becomes a tiring because, generally, there isn't enough variety to their songs. By the time Magic (No Bunny) sees Bree and Mansfield delivering alternating lines at the album's mid-point: "Suburban kids may tease our style/Well all you can do is just show them a smile/I may have to stop and rest a while/That's okay by me, you can buy me a Coke," you'll be crying out for a direction different to such measured cuteness. However, while such diversity rarely occurs, the album improves in its second half. Lead single Red Roller Skates is a fine pop tune with glockenspiel and handclaps and the album's title track is another example of The Brunettes getting it right, with long sections of subdued instrumentaltation punctuated by some pleasingly downbeat vocals. But these moments are fleeting and, by the time they arrive, it's hard not to already feel over the album. The problems with Paper Dolls are twofold. Firstly, the songs on offer aren't especially memorable. Secondly, the line between being adorably quirky and irritatingly twee is a thin one, and one which The Brunettes frequently step over. Somewhere in Paper Dolls are some rather good ideas, but they are suffocated by such overt tweeness.

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