Matt & Kim

iTunes Review

Charming, deliberately amateurish drum and keys duo Matt & Kim craft cleverly written, rough-around-the-edges pop tunes that repurpose the colossal beat, simple chord progressions, and lyrical earnestness of early ‘60s girl-group pop for the DIY era. Though Matt Johnson’s strangulated, deliberately untutored vocals might not immediately call to mind the winsome harmonies of say, the Ronettes, the principle beneath each group’s appeal is essentially the same. Like the Ronettes, Matt & Kim create highly romanticized images of adolescence that turn inexperience, breathless naiveté, and emotional vulnerability into the highest of virtues, but where the Ronettes addressed these themes over a thunderous wall of sound that evoked soul, doo-wop and Brill building classicism, Matt & Kim draw musical inspiration from the early ‘90s minimalism of K Records’ acts and, perhaps most surprisingly, the monolithic rhythms of Top-40 hip-hop. On their self-titled debut Matt & Kim perform 11 succinct, unabashedly sentimental odes to the Brooklyn underground scene from which they sprang.