With one part Nina Simone and one part Brooklyn counter-culture, Rayvon Browne's newest EP Companion strikes the perfect balance between post-postmodern and traditional pop music.
Released to tape cassette on May 18, 2012 on Basement Floods Records, Companion boasts a slew of musicians on guitar, ukulele, keys, mandolin, melodica, flute, percussion, and voice all collaborating to bring music together that is wholly unique to it's time and place. At the center of this enterprise is Morgan Heringer and Cal Folger Day.
Morgan Heringer has been proclaimed as a “ukulele virtuoso” from The New York Times, while Cal Folger Day has “vocal control and onstage presence that command[s] attention" according to The New Yorker. All superlatives aside, the tag team song writing and performance that these two command has stopped me in my tracks this week. Nevertheless, the two experimental songs from Companion, Cocktease and Cat on Chest, are a little too clumsy for my taste, where as the songs Where Is My Boyfriend and The Ghost of Rick Danko are absolute gems which bore into your frontal lobe and nestle snugly in your working memory for the remainder of the day.
Rayvon Browne will probably not change world one cassette tape at a time, but their idealism and their inventiveness will give their audience a fulfilling and creative experience to remember. Stream the EP in its entirety here. You dig?