Brooklyn Ex-Pats Make Good
by Lauren Beck
WOOM
Muu's Way
(Ba Da Bing!)
Local scenesters might like to consider it an abnormal order of events, but Sara Magenheimer and Eben Portnoy (formerly of Flying and Fertile Crescent) moved out of Brooklyn, then made the best album of their six-year collaborative career. Muu's Way, their first under the moniker WOOM, sounds like Bitte Orca if it were recorded on Fisher-Price instruments. Chunks of guitars, clacking percussion, warped beats, wood blocks, chimes, whistles and whatever other screechy, chirpy, bubbly, messed up-sounding thing they could find punctuate Magenheimer's girly sweet vocals and her foil Portnoy's plaintive wail. An emphatic use of negative space between elements makes the whole thing feel like an accidental jigsaw puzzle. But unlike the Dirty Projectors' disregard for danceable hooks or Micachu's inability's to stay put, WOOM stretches scraps into fully formed songs and rarely lets a hook out of sight. Brooklyn's rep might've gotten knocked in the process, but it also got us the sleeper hit of the summer.
