CD Review: The Sweet Bitters’ Debut Album

A folk-pop masterpiece. If you consider that statement an oxymoron, give a listen to the Sweet Bitters‘ full-length debut. The cd features the absolutely unique and individual voices and songwriting of Sharon Goldman and Nina Schmir (formerly one of the sirens in Aimee Van Dyne’s harmony-driven band). Goldman, who’s got three first-class albums of her own out, is one of those rare talents who could write a catchy, fun pop song seemingly in a split second. Like her songwriting, her vocals are almost breathtakingly warm and direct, delicately nuanced but completely unaffected. Schmir is more complex and oblique, both vocally and writing-wise, with just a tinge of smoke in the voice, blending a contemporary urban folk vibe (think Dar Williams) with oldschool Brill Building charm. Both are poignant, very bright and can be very funny – humor is a function of intellect anyway. Over a terse, impeccably tasteful, un-autotuned and drum machine-free mix of acoustic and electric guitar, rhythm section and Schmir’s incisive piano, the two blend voices and offer up an indelibly New York-flavored mix of struggle, despair and triumphant joy.

For the most part, Schmir’s songs are the darkest here. The cd’s opening cut Vegas is a knowing Harder They Come update for the end of the decade: “It’s all going nowhere fast.” From the opening lines of Last Time This Way, as the narrator grabs a cookie and some wine and runs out to meet her boyfriend, you just know that this is not going to work out well. Tom Thumb (on Brighton Beach), a quintessentially urban tale, is visceral with regret and longing. But then there’s the playfully metaphorical Little Aliens, driving out the demons with a lullaby.

Goldman’s Secret Scar is a great, crescendoing rock anthem disguised as pretty acoustic pop – one can only wonder what the BoDeans (or Ninth House, for that matter) could do with it. Falling Into Place is another catchy urban tale, perhaps the only song ever to immortalize Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn. “If I believed in god I would close my eyes and pray,” she sings in the imagistic, regret-laden acoustic Firefly. The somewhat tongue-in-cheek, upbeat Susie Sunshine, with its delicious layers of harmonies and lyrics, is less gloating schadenfreude than surprise that maybe things haven’t been so bad after all, in the years since Susie was in her prime (that was in college, Goldman wants you to know). But the centerpiece of the album, and one of the best songs released this decade, is Clocks Fall Back. If anyone is alive fifty years from now and wants to understand what New York was like at the end of the decade, let them listen to this, a towering, majestic harmony-driven anthem, vividly and unforgettably juxtaposing images of clueless excess and grinding poverty over a bittersweet, swaying 6/8 melody slightly evocative of Simon & Garfunkel’s Hazy Shade of Winter. The cd closes, something akin to sweet after bitter, with a love song: the guy can watch all the bad action movies he wants, but the girl’s not going to let him finish that pint of ice cream without giving her a bite!

The Sweet Bitters play the cd release for this one at Kenny’s Castaways on May 30 at 7.

Advertisement

The Sound of the City

Saturday night’s show at Pete’s Candy Store was a quintessential New York experience, two solid hours of urbane, cosmopolitan tunesmithing. The Sweet Bitters opened, Sharon Goldman and Nina Schmir taking turns playing guitar and singing lead, Schmir doubling effortlessly on piano, each singing harmony on the other’s songs. Goldman’s been a star in the under-the-radar New York songwriter community for awhile now, but Schmir was the real surprise tonight. Two years ago, the former backup singer from Aimee Van Dyne’s band was out of music completely; tonight, she held the crowd in the palm of her hand. Combining these two talents was something of a stroke of genius: both have a way with catchy hooks and eloquently witty lyrics which are often downright hilarious.

They opened with a Goldman song, Clocks Fall Back, the gorgeous opening track on the new Sweet Bitters ep with its rich harmonies and evocative rush-hour lyric. Schmir followed with the subtly satirical Rich Little Poor Girl, its sarcasm ever more apt as the New York that she and Goldman represent slides further into suburban torpor.

“I was an 80s girl before I turned into a folkie,” Goldman laughed as she launched into a stripped-down cover of In Between Days by the Cure. What a revelation that was: like Melomane frontman Pierre de Gaillande’s version of Overkill by Men at Work, or Ward White’s cover of Abba’s Dancing Queen, Goldman reached down deep into the song and pulled out a wellspring of emotion that she sent flying over Schmir’s pointillistic piano work. In their hands, what could have been schlock was anything but. The rest of the show was all originals, reaffirming the two womens’ singular sense of purpose: to cram as many catchy hooks into the set as time would permit.

“Now we’re going to play a Roches song that’s not by the Roches,” Goldman deadpanned at the end of the show, and the two women ran through a spot-on parody, a chipper, cheery summer camp singalong about little aliens taking over the world. Sleepy little aliens, as it turns out. It wouldn’t be fair to give away the rest of the joke.

Alice Lee was next on the bill, one of the best songwriters in New York before she was priced out of town like so many others. Soul music is her reference point – her 2004 album Lovers and Losers is one of the best in that style to be released in the last several years – but she’s always had a fondness for Brazilian sounds. She’s been living in Guatemala recently, and going deep into all kinds of tropicalia. Despite some technical difficulties (for some reason, it was impossible to get her acoustic guitar in the sound mix), she kept the crowd riveted throughout her hourlong set. Like the duo on the bill before her, Lee also has a devilish sense of humor, but her songwriting is stormy, passionate, frequently exasperated. She doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Using a variety of guitar tunings and singing in four languages, she played a mix of mostly new material along with covers from Brazil and elsewhere south of the border. The best songs on the bill were an audience request, the absolutely brilliant, Nina Simone-inflected Where Are You My Love, and a slow, pensive new one in 6/8 time. Yet another reminder that we shouldn’t take people like Alice Lee for granted: if you haven’t seen your favorite singer or band in awhile, maybe you should while you still can.

Meet the Sweet Bitters!

The astonishingly good, catchy, wickedly smart debut from the Sweet Bitters, two of New York’s most unique songwriting talents. When she’s at the top of her game, Sharon Goldman is one of the world’s foremost pop tunesmiths, alongside Aimee Mann and Elvis Costello. Her full-length debut (released under her former name Sharon Edry) is one of the best artsy pop albums ever made, a feast of luscious guitar and keyboard textures. Nina Schmir first made a mark in the New York scene as one of the superb harmony singers in Aimee Van Dyne’s band. Since that group broke up, she’s been plying her solo work, acoustic songs imbued equally with devious wit and haunting intensity. She’s also a tremendously good singer (as one would imagine from someone who worked closely with Van Dyne), with a velvety high soprano rich with subtlety and emotion. Goldman is just as subtle, with a slightly lower register and a casual, completely unaffected, almost conversational style. The duo’s layers of harmonies on this album are often wrenchingly beautiful. Each songwriter contributes two songs to this effort.

The first, Clocks Fall Back is a total 60s throwback, an instant classic with its lush bed of chiming acoustic guitars and soaring harmonies, an unforgettable melody that lingers like Hazy Shade of Winter or California Dreaming. Goldman’s evocative lyrics paint a vivid yet characteristically nuanced, somewhat melancholy picture of twilight New York, 2008.

Falling Into Place, another Sharon Goldman number is perhaps the Sweet Bitters’ Perfect Day, the song’s narrator breezing along Seventh Avenue (in Brooklyn, naturally) hoping to see her main squeeze: “Only gravity keeps me from flying,” she smiles. It’s another indelible New York (or make that Brooklyn!) moment.

Nina Schmir’s Last Time This Way bounces along on a classic piano pop melody, with tasteful strings in places. ““Don’t say silly things that make your ears ring,” she cautions. The album’s final track is the somewhat jazz-inflected, pensive, intriguingly titled Monterey SPBG. The Monterey in the song is actually a town in the Berkshires (although it’s not named here); SPBG stands for Suckling Pigs and Baby Goats, which was a silly working title Schmir came up with in characteristic fashion while playing the song for a friend in a park in Chinatown. A truck passed by, the phrase emblazoned on its side, and suddenly the tune had a name. For a little while, at least.

The album is available online and at shows. The Sweet Bitters play Saturday, March 22 at 9 PM at the Perch Café, 365 Fifth Avenue in Park Slope.