Arthur & Yu are a co-ed singer/songwriter duo from Seattle who don’t go by their real names and dress up their mostly acoustic songs with quirky instruments like xylophones, melodicas, and cheap keyboards. Needless to say, that formula usually comes off as unbearably twee, but these two have struck a measured balance. In Camera doesn’t feel so much like a kiddie indie-pop album as it does something like the first Beta Band record. The fun instruments are there, but they channel a Velvet Underground sort of vibe: echoey and distant, though never so droning as to lose sight of the songs. In Camera was actually the duo’s demo until Sub Pop’s new imprint Hardly Art decided to release it as-is, and that careful, tentative mindset of a group feeling out their first go-around comes across. The songs are gentle and pretty, but the ornamentation never gets ahead of the music itself. For all the xylophones and reverb chambers, there’s nothing here that couldn’t be played on a stage with two singers and acoustic guitars.
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