"Worm's Head" - Joker's Daughter
If Gnarls Barkley can refer to themselves as the "odd couple" (as per their 2008 album), then what to make of this pairing of Helena Costas, a London-born singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist of Greek Cypriot extraction, and Danger Mouse (himself half of Gnarls Barkley)? A really really odd couple?
And what to make of this odd-couply music, part pastoral airiness, part Twilight Zoney strangeness? There are uncanny lyrics--"The horses turn into cows/And sheep lie on the edge of the road"--and an off-kilter heaviness to a beat that kind of wants to be lilting but isn't, really. There are warm acoustic instruments and wayward keyboards and electronic effects that sound like a combination of a theremin and an old-fashioned radio dial trying to tune in a station. Through it all, Costas--a classically trained violinist, among other things--sings with an unperturbed, slightly breathy sweetness, almost as if no one has told her exactly what she's singing about. Not that I have any idea either. And how short this is! Just when you're ready to sink into the mystery of it all, it's over. Rendering it all the more mysterious, I suppose.
"Worm's Head" came out as a digital single in November, a 7-inch vinyl record in December, and will be on the debut Joker's Daughter album, The Last Laugh, when it comes out in February, on Team Love Records. MP3 via Team Love.
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