
Tracks
His & Her Vanities: "Wait It Out"
(2009)
By George Bass | 31 October 2009
If you like your indie singles to come in brighter shades of suburban, pay a quick visit to the punk nuptuals of newlyweds His & Her Vanities: the Madison quartet with a John & Yoko temperament, minus the flashbulbs and body hair. These husband-and-wife fronted rockers steal weirdo-wedlock designs from Jack White, though Ricky and Terrin Riemer have a style of their own to flaunt, adding a crest of personalised hell to their billowing pop-rock throwovers. Perhaps the most billowy/bellowy in the new winter line is potential chart tingler “Wait It Out,” from third LP The Mighty Lunge. As the lunging suggests there’s war in suburbia, and “Wait It Out” is the circling tiger phase that warns this fight is about to knock walls through. “You see, dear, I was right,” says His Vanities between badly aimed swings of the frying pan. “The place could use an extension.”
Despite its opening saw-tooth jangle being a B-side to almost any Kings of Leon hit, “Wait It Out” goes a shade further in its attempts to try and truly use somebody. Ricky Reimer, while not quite as angry as his cinematic namesake is clearly incensed by something, and smothers his temper by howling “We wait / We wait / We wait / It out” doggedly into a chorus. “Underneath the sunlight there is darkness / Underneath the darkness there is lightness,” he adds, reducing the row with his unstoppable wife down to time-lapse photography; the blur of bad days fast-forwarding. The Pixies comparisons being banded about deserve to stick to this one, and if Frank Black should ever go Henry VIII and decide he needs a new wife/Grand Duchy record, he should definitely have these two over for a barbeque.