SMALL BLACK

"Production-wise, "Despicable Dogs" is a little masked and faint (how bedroom), but it tugs at you so sweetly and sorrowfully that it begins to feel overwhelmingly huge. "Just Like Honey" huge. Small Black is the Long Island duo of Josh Kolenik and Ryan Heyner, and they make the kind of hazy lo-fi we've been hearing a lot this summer (live, they add Pitchfork.tv contributors Juan Pieczanski and Jeff Curtin to the mix). But as much as the season is about goofy sunglasses and cold beer, it's also about those garden-crippling late-month frosts. And these guys have that sense of yearning on lock. The pieces that comprise "Despicable Dogs" seem so Frisbee-friendly that you'd expect any emotional relevance to be rendered moot, from the tacky drum machine to the heavy processing on that tubular guitar noise, to the glossy melancholic key plunks. But it both warms and bruises at the same time. "Do it without me, do it when I'm gone," goes the hook. Such gimmick-free sentimentality can often prove too difficult to finagle, but "Despicable Dogs" is a guaranteed soul-stirrer." - Pitchfork

--latest obsession


..and the remix by Washed Out, even better.




Im about to try and convince these Brooklyn natives to play a show in early May when I visit. Ill keep you posted.
myspace.com/smallblacksounds