The Postmarks

The Postmarks

(Unfiltered)

Record Review by Marcel Feldmar

Quietly happy sad sweet pop from The Postmarks. With part of the sounds hitting along an Ivy / Echobelly / Autour De Lucie vein, you get sparkling female vocals bouncing over tight tunes that are very bright in their melancholia—almost like a more upbeat Mazzy Star, romantically cute sad songs. The other part of the sound, which ties in and fits perfectly next to the happy sad shimmer, moves more towards a French pop sensibility. The vocals are soft and seductive, thanks to the whispered and knowing style of Tim Yehezkely. Yes, her name is Tim… but don’t let that fool you, because she moves right up there alongside Hope Sandoval, Kendra Smith, and Astrud Gilberto.
 

Most of the songs move pretty down-tempo, but not in a way that leaves you moping alone in a corner. It’s just pretty and drifting, and when the pop actually starts to pop, it lifts you up like the perfect glass of champagne after getting kind of upset about the rain. The melodies and the harmonies hinting at the café and lounge sounds that you might expect to hear drifting out along starry night streets in Paris crossing with an almost Stereolab / Belle & Sebastian innocence. Francoise Hardy playing around with Bacharach-styled compositions and Brian Wilson sensibilities. It feels like something you could listen to right between the end of summer and the beginning of fall, and every time you listened to it, it would feel like springtime. It’s lounge, but not space-age cocktail hipster kinda lounge. Much more definitely swaying and seductively slipping towards that place that has the smooth cool lounge thing going, but I mean stylish red soft spotlight well-dressed people swaying like extras in Blue Velvet kind of lounge.