Damon and Naomi, False Beats and True Hearts

review by dave heaton

As I age, I have increasingly more of a tolerance for, even an appreciation of, cheesy pop music on the radio. I have less sympathy with either-or attitudes towards music, where you either like cool music or you don’t. I find myself, more often than ever, being left cold by the hippest new bands who are supposedly on the cutting-edge. At the same time, my appreciation for musicians who steadfastly walk their own path, staying apart from trends and not giving in to economic or cultural pressures to fit in, only increases with each passing day.

Put Damon and Naomi in that walking-own-path category. Perhaps they epitomize it. They will never get the level of acclaim I imagine they should have, but that’s precisely because of their strengths – their music pulls no flashy tricks to get your attention. It privileges patience, thoughtfulness and humility; traits that are underappreciated in the music world and the broader culture. They associate with, and draw influence from, other non-flashy countercultural figures from around the world. The beauty of their music is quiet, imperfect, mysterious.

Their seventh studio album, False Beats and True Hearts is an especially patient and lovely work. There is less turmoil and darkness in the lyrics and music than on their last LP, 2007’s Within These Walls, but it still presents an uncertain world. Singing alternately like ghosts and road-weary travelers, Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang sing together beautifully, sometimes faintly echoing each other and other times stridently building up energy together, like on the ending of “Shadow Boxing”. Among others, they’re again joined by Ghost’s Michio Kurihara, whose guitar has become almost an integral part of their sound at this point. His mournful electric guitar complements and contrasts with the out-of-time folk setting, yet seems just as much like a voice from across the ages. It’s the first thing you hear on the album, and it burns the air on the opening track, “Walking Backwards”, while Krukowski sings poetically about time. The level of detail in the music matches the level of detail in the lyrics, which paint pictures clearly, whether setting a scene, telling a story, or just conjuring up images that each will provoke different feelings in listeners (and, of course, they’re usually doing a few of these at once).

Kurihara’s electric guitar is a key part of the fabric of the album, but it always gains strength from how it interacts with the rest: piano, acoustic guitars, drums, sax, trumpet and, of course, their voices. The songs are bittersweet, but also peaceful – like “Shadow Boxing”, a memorable entreaty to not fight nonexistent demons. The moment when the guitar takes over right after Yang sings, “so let’s not fight / let’s not waste tonight”, is breathtaking.

{www.damonandnaomi.com}