With their third album, Sidewalks, Matt & Kim seem to have captured the pulse of our generation. In “Cameras,” Matt chastises Facebook mobile upload abusers, begging them to stop snapping photos and chasing Internet immortality. After all, he says, “we’ll be gone when we’re dead.”
As a generation, we’ve been labeled overindulged slackers. From this perspective, Matt & Kim are typical, a pair of twenty–somethings slamming the keyboard until a tune sticks. The indie power pop duo, based in — where else? — Brooklyn, are known for their cheerful, plucky aesthetic. There’s a haphazard feel to their songs, a sense that they’re just trying out this music thing. Their music didn’t have to be created, but Matt & Kim were sitting around one day, so it was.
The songs are experiments, a search for the magic of their most famous single, “Daylight,” which can now be heard on television selling Bacardi.
With more misses than hits, Sidewalks sometimes sounds like a Good Charlotte cover band. Matt nasally wails forced melodies above a perfectly square beat. One track, “AM/FM Sound,” is reminiscent of a Romanian folk song, with an annoying oom–pah looped in the back.
But, at their best, the songs are jubilant and special. They are hip and twinkly, a feel–good combination that belongs behind a commercial. Some of them, like “Block After Block,” are so catchy that they’ll have you wondering which product they’ll be advertising.
