The cowboy and the lady

Arthur & Yu - "Lion's Mouth" and "Absurd Heroes Manifesto"

The party line on Arthur & Yu is that this Seattle duo pulls a fantastic Nancy and Lee impression, and I couldn't agree more. They're not alone, however, and so I have to wonder: Is Hazlewood really so cool of a sudden, or is all the worship a product of the death sentence--he was diagnosed with terminal renal cancer--that the idiosyncratic songwriter received earlier this year?

Personally, I blame the critics: In Camera, the duo's enchanting debut, certainly wears the Hazlewood aesthetic on its sleeve, but it balances it with equal parts Velvet Underground, Galaxie 500 and Tommy James. Like the best of all those groups, and Hazlewood's late-'60s work especially, In Camera is a study in contrasts. For every lounged-out Rhodes, there's a fuzz-drenched Fender; the many harmonies seem both torn and balanced by Sonya Wescott's (Yu) sugary vocals and Grant Olsen's (Arthur) Banhartlike rasp. To buttress that affect, Olsen's voice always hides behind reverb effects, while Wescott's is unadorned.

The point is that I can't get enough of this album. Highly, highly recommended.





Hey, since I'm in a good mood, here's a song by another dude named Arthur!