His & Her Vanities - His & Her Vanities

All Music Guide

While the arty His Her Vanities owes a great deal of its cannon to postpunkers Devo, the spirited recklessness of the Pixies, and even the prepunk innovators the Monks) (via drummer Sara Winkelman's aggressive and tribal tomheavy approach to percussion), it would be severely unfair to dub the group as a carbon copy of anything. On their energetic self titled debut, the group dives right into said thumping drums along with droning keyboard under the stoic, almost robotic vocals of bassist/keyboardist Terrin Reimer and push through the entire album with enthusiasm and innovative, contrasting workouts. "52 Pickup" summons sharp and elliptical guitar work, layered intelligently by Ricky Reimer, and catchy vocal tradeoffs between Terrin and Ricky Reimer while "Back 2 Square 1" forsakes some of the tension for a more summery (a dirty summer, make no mistake), melodic approach which could easily be plugged into one of the many hipster, feelgood Volkswagen advertisements, provided Volkswagen ...were looking for a gritty image. At times the fidelity is purposely gross (shall we call it grofi?), but His Her Vanities have the ultimate knack for feeding off of this to build layers of clever depth which is slowly unveiled over several listens. Whether or not Madison, Wisconsin has realized what an intriguing group it has in the difficulttopindown His Her Vanities is a question which begs to be asked, however one hopes the answer is yes and implores the rest of the world to take a minute to listen to an infectious, fun, and refreshing group who simultaneously stands far out from and somehow fits into the scene of the numerous punk and postpunk revivalist bands which dominated the indieculture during the early 2000s. - Gregory McIntosh, All Music Guide Read more Less