Phantogram
Eyelid Movies
Barsuk
There’s a certain amount comfort to be gleamed from listening to Mouthful of Stars, the debut album by the upstate New York duo of Josh Carter and Sarah Barthel known as Phantogram. Should you remember Moby’s breakthrough melding of folk and electronic music on Play, or the early work by trip-hop artists like Portishead and Tricky, then Phantogram’s brand of laid back pop will hit a nostalgic spot. Many of us owned those albums, and some of us really enjoyed them. At the time, in the ’90s, they sounded fresh and unique. Who knew urban rhythms could be smoothed and grooved to the point where they’d become the audio equivalent of valium? Today, those trip-hop records sound, well, dated and slow. Even in a musical climate where everything old is still pretty much everything new, one has to ask the question: Do we really need to revisit this trend in 2010? 6 out of 10 on The Rockometer.
