Published 01:49, November the 12th, 2009
Short and sweet, but deserving of exclamation point
Forget what you think you know about the perfect pop song. The one thing that holds true across the board is that no song should exceed four minutes. At least according to Pants Yell! lead singer, Andrew Churchman.
“Sometimes I get impatient at three minutes,” he says. “There’s a really good quote that I very much take to heart by this Australian band called the Cat’s Meow that was a big influence on me. They would always say, ‘A three-minute song is one minute too long.’ We really like to keep things short and sweet.”
The Cambridge-based trio, consisting also of longtime member Sterling Bryant and drummer Casey Keenan, spins tender, hushed vignettes of melancholy to the tune of simple, effective indie pop. They’re often likened to Scottish folk-pop darlings Belle and Sebastian, a comparison which they haven’t been able to shake after four albums.
“We’re a little tired of the comparison but that’s no one’s fault but our own,” says Churchman. “I’ve listened to that band so much that I’m sure that it’s there whether I’m conscious of it or not.”
Pants Yell!
Tonight, 8
Pi Lam at the University of Pennsylvania
3914 Spruce St., $8 myspace.com/thepilam
They’re cute, but don’t call them twee
Their music isn’t what they’d call twee, but other people certainly think it is. But who calls themselves that, anyway?
“Twee I like worse than Belle and Sebastian,” says Churchman with a laugh. “I definitely hear in our early stuff how it does sound twee, but that’s a tag we’ve never embraced.”
But then again, has any band ever embraced the tag of twee?
METRO/HP