Gem Club

Here's something totally different, a huge body-bathing beam of light amongst all the shadowy electronics and distorted guitars I've been punting at you lately. This is Gem Club, and they are a cello/piano/beautiful vocalled boy/girl duo from Massachusetts, who remind me of Horse Feathers, Beach House, Bon Iver - to varying degrees. There's a stoic grace, an exuberance and a wintery loneliness all simultaneously vying for a place by the fireside in this album, their first self-release available as CD or download; Acid and Everything. This is another excellent random find; released in the Summer I stumbled across them listening to a Last.fm radio station the other week (Wild Nothing I think), got hold of the ep from their Bandcamp and have been playing it constantly ever since.  Their minimally composed orchestrations have an understated clarity underlying the airy, soft-focus form of folk they unfurl as each song progresses. Grounded by firm and earthy piano stabs and the innocent, slightly mournful gravitas of Christopher Barnes' voice, the choruses and refrains repeat and loop like flickering dreams, gently enveloped by the drifting, slowly drawn cello of Kristen Drymala add each song with a sense of optimism as they search out each subtely different avenue of the songs' form. As soon as you press play you'll feel it connect, as familiar and novel as a deja vu trip, and warmingly so.


You can download two tracks from their Last fm:


Acid and Everything

and
Sevens

They also have a myspazz, if you must.

You'll see they are equally adept at commissioning beautifully haunting videos for their music, Three of the tracks from the album have feature promos directed by Brianna Olson; Sevens, Spine, and Animals: