New Buffalo "The Last Beautiful Day" (Arts & Crafts)
By Trey Perkins
Tuesday. Aug 16, 12:03 AM
Changing the face of pop music, while keeping all that’s good about it.

I ponder over the sounds every time I listen to the opening track of New Buffalo’s The Last Beautiful Day. Why, you may ask? Because it’s popular music, and it’s kind of cutesy, but it’s also a stunning achievement for newcomer singer/songwriter Sally Seltmann. Her creativity and special talent for composing a song cycle out of samples, sounds, tones, and disparate percussion (and yes, hand claps) could very well lead one to conclude that The Last Beautiful Day very may be defining the new direction that pop music is taking.

So, the next question is: what makes me so sure that New Buffalo are redefining the way pop music can be written, composed, and performed? First of all, the songwriting reflects everything good about the “Greats.” If permitted, I want to compare it to one of my favorite pop composers, Pete Townsend. The first track, “Recovery,” opens with an interesting assortment of handclap percussion and wind chimes, slowly builds into the chorus. Ms. Seltman uses all of these sounds perfectly, because by the time she reaches the chorus, the listener has been expecting it for so long. It’s as if you’ve been sitting by your speakers saying: “c’mon, get to it.” She does, and it’s well placed. Indeed, recovery leads you to expect the chorus, but it’s reached through the kind of bravado that only Pete Townsend could achieve in some of the best cuts from Tommy. All of the energy focuses in the word “recovery,” and all of the tension built up in the verses suddenly releases, resolving perfectly. It’s the kind of chorus that washes over you so rhapsodically that you just want to constantly loop it and have it play in your head.

But it’s not simply that she knows the tricks of the Greats. I guess, in my opinion, a good song makes you believe in the mood it sets out to capture. What I hope for when I listen to exceedingly good pop is to be transported to a feeling… or a moment when I had that feeling. I listen to the second track, “I’ve Got You and You’ve Got Me,” and the sampled melancholy saxophones and looped piano transport me to a rainy night in the dark. Here, New Buffalo produce that moment in time that you wish you’d never forget. It’s the memory you’d always wished you could keep and never let go of. When she sings the album’s title, “This may be the last beautiful day / I’m dancing in my sleep / with promises I’ll keep,” it’s like I’ve been sent back to the last night before I left for college, sad from all the goodbyes I’ll have to say, but nervously excited and anticipating what the next four years of my life will bring. Bear with my own personal reactions to these songs, but it’s to New Buffalo’s credit that a cheery pop song can conjure up those feelings. Furthermore, her lyrics are like that inner shy voice that we all have at one time or another. It’s the voice that expresses what we wish we could say in our best moments, but for some reason don’t.

However, you could ask: “isn’t this what all pop music supposedly does for people?” To that rejoinder, I answer “sure.” Yet, to this date, so few are willing to use what individuals like Four Tet have been doing with electronic, laptop based music: take samples and loops and use them in such a way as to produce pure pop power, beauty, and grace. This facet of The Last Beautiful Day isn’t surprising, given that her husband is a member of The Avalanches. But to take it to extremes, with the few simple drum samples and horn samples Seltmann uses, New Buffalo achieve the full sound of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Through looping a big band riff on “On Sunday,” New Buffalo map her own melody on an already existing loop to make something entirely new. This ability, to take a swirling arsenal of sounds and make it her own palette, is Seltmann’s true talent and niche, and it’s one she should develop. Although it’s a mere cut and paste on a laptop, the sampling exhibited on The Last Beautiful Day takes the songs to a whole new level of intrigue. Yes, a few songs are weak and not as strong as “Recovery” or “On Sunday,” but gems on this album more than offset the slower moments.
www.newbuffalo.net
www.arts-crafts.ca

Trey Perkins

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