It’s difficult to settle on what’s most annoying about Edam-flavoured, Bontempi organ-toting Brooklyn duo Matt & Kim. Is it Matt’s grating surf-dude vocals? Or the fact that this album is two years old? Or that it’s been picked up by Tellé Records, once a byword for innovative leftfield pop (see Röyksopp, Kings Of Convenience), but now reduced to this bilge? Or that when people ask what you are listening to, they think you say “Mel & Kim”, as in the sultry ’80s Stock, Aitken & Waterman popsters? Perhaps it’s the fact that ‘Yea Yeah’ – their bouncy, Fisher Price-does-garage rock, interweb hit of last year – is the only thing here worth one scintilla of your time? No. It’s the secret track. Called ‘Secret Track’. Which consists of one minute
of silence and then Matt goofing around. It is not, by any definition, a song. Or secret – it took us one second to find it. Wish we hadn’t bothered.
Stephen Worthy