Tacking

One particular subset of the '90s twee pop scene blended acoustic guitars and winsome vocals with electronic keyboards and dance beats: the Field Mice were perhaps the best known, but fans of the style can reel off many other worthy examples. Swedish duo the Embassy are a late addition to the canon, but they slot in perfectly. 2005's Tacking is roughly evenly split between gentle indie pop tunes with ticking sequencers underneath, as exemplified by the simply lovely first single "Stage Persona," and more aggressively electronic dance-pop tunes like the throbbing "Lurking (With a Distance)," which strongly recalls disciples of New Order such as Section 25 and the Stockholm Monsters. Those who didn't care for this sort of thing back when it was much more common will have the same complaints now: Fredrik Lindson has one of those wispy, eternally slightly off-key voices that makes Astrud Gilberto sound like Bessie Smith, and Torbjorn Hakansson's synths will not appeal to anyone who considers the likes of Depeche Mode or the Pet Shop Boys to be sins against rock & roll. But Tacking is an appealing, endearing disc guaranteed to appeal to the sensitive English major in all of us. ~ Stewart Mason