Bright White Trims – Charlee Remitz (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

It’s sometimes nice when music shakes you out of those comfortable, tribal music zones you build around yourself, ones that probably have more to do with a younger version of your self than any rational reasoning. Weird but nice. There is certain PR company in Minneapolis who has the habit of doing this to me. Here I am running a site championing leftfield and under radar music and they send me music, which is decidedly of a pop vibe. Not pop in the obvious, chart bound, crass commercialist vein, more like pop that is the modern continuation of the post-punk explorations that took place in the early eighties here in the UK, music that follows an alternative, parallel, alt-pop trajectory.

At first Bright White Trims seems like another female diva looking for a career. Then you play it again and you notice the subtle textures framing the vocal. You notice the smoky, late night feel, the drifting ambience that fills the place where less thoughtful artists would pile on the hooks and employ the more obvious studio tricks. After a while you realise that this is an artist who has started with the depth and emotion, the feel and the groove and added the more mainstream elements on to that rather than the other way around. A trojan horse bearing wonderful gifts surrounded by a field of donkeys packed with the same old pop fare.

The result is a set of songs that would give any current pop diva a run for their money but it is also an album that delivers something that her peers fail to. This is pop with soul, real soul, real depth, real integrity. Where most pop goes for the jugular as a way to get to your wallet, nothing so crass happens here. This is music that goes for the heart as a way of getting to the soul. So here I am praising what is essentially an electronic-pop album. Damn it, they have done it again.