While there certainly is some twee funk surrounding Dag för Dag, the brother-sister duo manage to achieve genuine emotional power on “Boo,” even on tunes that threaten to become precious and annoying. They know how to restrain their obvious desire to go for the easy artsy; instead they allow a line to linger, a vocal to echo, a line to move on to another without trying to use sustain as proof of importance.
They know that the simplicity of the tunes can speak more volumes than the urge to overstate. Clearly, in other hands, “Silence is the Verb” and “Traffic Jam” would be awful in lesser hands, retro arrogant pop only a McLaren could love. Equally true is that songs like “Seven Stories” and “Boxed in Pine” are claustrophobic, understated but raw gems, the vocals of both Parthemore and Donald Snavely trusting their music enough to carry the power as much as the vocals. And while “The Leather of Your Boots” and “Came in Like a Knife” don’t reach the erotic menace intended, “I Am The Assassin” and “Ring Me, Elsie” DO.
Dag för Dag so teeter on the verge of wasting our time with tired atmospheric clichés, that each tangent away from that and into sexy, gritty honest pop-rock is more a revelation than a relief. “Boo” is as brilliant as it thinks it is, but only in the many moments in which Dag för Dag don’t think, but act, on their best instincts.
Ceremony Recordings
7/10
