Tracks
Thao & the Get Down Stay Down: "Know Better Learn Faster"
(2009)
By Clayton Purdom | 8 October 2009
Thao and the Get Down Stay Down’s new record is sexy in a sort of non-sexual way—romantic, like. The record is full of itchy demands and downright coos—coos!—frequently so directly romantic toward the listener (or, um, the second person) that to harp on them or address them directly would be uncouth at the least, subjugating though more-like. Or, put it this way: writing about a woman musician in terms of her sexuality is, like, male music critic no-no #1, on the one hand, while on the other, I literally think Thao Nguyen is flirting with me on this new record. Me in particular. In this sweater. Today.
This does not let up on the title track, although it eschews some of the rest of the record’s more direct come-ons (for shame, “Body”) in favor of a sort of relationshippy terseness. “I am too sleepy to fight,” she says at one point before letting the song’s big circus-tent-like structure pull her up into another big belt of that chorus. And it’s this peaking, sighing structure, along with the swirling “Fake Palindromes” instrumentation, that drags the me-&-you lyrical interplay up into the transcendent keening romantic midst of the rest of the record.