Chewing Pine

The Dutchess & The Duke – She’s the Dutchess, He’s the Duke (Hardly Art, 2008)

(This originally appeared in Skyscraper)

This debut pretty much has it all. Simple melodies and percussion, ample guitar work and vocals that are friendly enough that one might be able to hear them emanating from your friends’ kitchen. The perverse, self-aggrandizement that tails ‘indie’ releases, and Seattle in general, is auspiciously absent from this work. After producing a single with Boom Boom, those at Hardly Art saw fit to lend their NW peers services of their imprint to release this disc. From the chimes of the first chords on “Reservoir Park” to the hand claps latter found in the song, the ability of this group to simply say what they believe to be true and wrap that concept in a seemingly digestible acoustic pop song is pretty staggering. Along the way, the two principal characters, Kimberly Morrison and Jesse Lortz, evoke everything from fortune tellers to gypsies to chains in a folk-tradition that perhaps they don’t strictly fit into, but surely appreciate. At some points, perpetuating this folk affiliation, the voice of Lortz can recall Leonard Cohen in its deadpan expansiveness on “Ship Made of Stone” or even Lou Reed on “Back to Me”. But the remarkable thing is how the pair’s vocals can summon either Simon and Garfunkel or Exene and John Doe. That’s a lot of ground to cover. And they do it in 10 songs.

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Tracklisting:
01 – Reservoir Park
02 – Out of Time
03 – Ship Made of Stone
04 – Strangers
05 – The Prisoner
06 – Back To Me
07 – Mary
08 – You Can Tell the Truth, Now
09 – I Am Just a Ghost
10 – Armageddon Song