With the instantly fresh and longingly innocent xylophone melody set to groove-based indie, we are introduced to the Sweden-based duo Duets and Stuff with their debut single ‘Serve Somebody‘.
Greta and Raymond embraced simplicity and knew clearly how to serve a near-perfect vocal melody with the autumnal strings, spacious guitar strums and that xylophone that I could listen to for days. Most of all though, Duets and Stuff know subtlety. This is a controlled yet passionate, groove-based but sensitive record. This is a duo that clearly knows what it set out to achieve. A very many acts could learn a thing or two from this one tune alone.
“You always have to serve somebody, you always have to be somebody“, a lyric that could mean so many things but with the whispered and pure delivery, hints at a deep melancholy and inward-looking poetry. Like the best pop songs, the depth is hidden beneath an addictive and rapturous tune- and this is one addictive song!
When indie-pop seems to hang on a crossroads of throwbacks to 80’s and 90’s synths and the angular jump rhythms that simultaneously straddle rock and hip-hop, Duets and Stuff cooly open with a debut that needs none of the former and even less of the latter. Serve Somebody is poetic, very danceable and very conscious of what it’s trying to achieve, it’s songs like this that come from nowhere and end up in the stratosphere. It’ll stand out a mile between current trends and deserves all the praise it gets.
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