In-Store Session: Piano brightens Mates' already percolating pop.

Mates Of State - Re-Arrange Us
Posted by Laila Hanson on 07-Jul-08 @ 12:55 PM

[4/5]
Familial duo Mates Of State significantly switch gears on their fifth album, ditching Kori Gardner's familiar electric organ for piano and other keyboards. Following up their Shortlist-nominated 2006 release Bring It Back, Gardner and drummer Jason Hammel discover a prettier, fuller-bodied sound, and enrich that with other instruments, such as strings on the inviting opener, "Get Better," whose upbeat warmth suggests the New Pornographers. The intertwining vocal melodies and harmonies--always one of the duo's big draws--are well crafted, flowing into rather than stepping over each other as they've sometimes done on previous releases. The piano's crisper tone lightens the band's step, and the best tracks trade on this infectious perkiness, such as the anthemic "You Are Free," "My Only Offer," with its swelling piano builds, marching rhythm and horn-fueled outro, or the dream pop-ish "Great Dane" that's driven by a catchy, percussive vocal scat. Not only are the arrangements more tightly constructed, but the album avoids drifting into the sameness that afflicts the second half of some Mates releases. The album's highlight "The Re-Arranger" gathers their many charms--soaring vocals, luminous melody, hopeful sentiment--in an infectious pop ode to the inevitability of change. If only change were always as welcome as it is here. (BARSUK) Chris Parker

ROCKS LIKE:
The Hush Sound's Like Vines
Ben Folds' Rockin' The Suburbs
Ivy's In The Clear

IN-STORE SESSION WITH KEYBOARDIST/VOCALIST KORI GARDNER AND DRUMMER/VOCALIST JASON HAMMEL

Did your tour last year backing the NPR program This American Life influence your decision to ditch the electric organ?
JASON HAMMEL: We'd been contemplating changing because we started feeling a little stifled by the organ. It's cool and has some strange and interesting sounds, but we'd done four full-lengths on it, and we were just kind of getting tired of it. We just weren't inspired by it any more. At the same time, we were kind of afraid to get entirely away from it. So I think doing the piano shows and doing the This American Life tour encouraged us to be like, "Oh, we can totally pull this off." So we ended up writing most of the songs on the piano and other keyboards and then in the studio obviously you can fill in with other instruments and keyboards and stuff. We just started rehearsing all the new songs, so it's fun and sort of challenging to fill in all the spaces like the record does without the big fat organ. But we're still going to play the organ on tour for the old songs.

Other than the organ, how does Re-Arrange Us differ from the last album?
HAMMEL: The songwriting is different in a lot of ways. We started a different process with Bring It Back. Like, "We don't need 15 parts in each song like we used to do." We would write a little 30 second part, and be like, "All right, let's write another," and then we'd just jam, like, 10 of those together until we had a song. Then with Bring It Back we focused on [having] three or four parts to a song, and I think we focused [even] more on that this record. Lyrically, we thought it out more and weren't so whimsical on a lot of the lyrics. We really got together and critiqued every word until we felt like we were conveying exactly what the song was meant to convey.

What was the biggest change for the band since having children? [The couple had their second daughter, June, shortly after finishing Re-Arrange Us in December. She joins older sister, Magnolia.]
KORI GARDNER: Ever since having [Magnolia] we're way more laid back about a lot of things, because we have to be. We can't freak out over a song structure because we have bigger things to worry about. Overall, it's a more peaceful environment in the studio. In fact, we were just talking the other day about how the last record we really fought on while we were recording was Team Boo [before Magnolia's birth]. It's made us put everything into perspective and enjoy the time we get to make music instead of freaking out over tiny little things. --Chris Parker


Official Website: http://www.barsuk.com


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