Buzzin Music

The Smiles and Frowns

The Smiles and Frowns release debut, eponymous album in UK on 16 August, on Manchester-based aA Recordings

The story begins, in a time not too far ago, in Phoenix. Adam Mattson was living in his own world, mainly due to his unruly height. However, when he chanced to break the spell and gaze down he saw the beaming eccentricity of Christopher James smiling right back at him. Adam and Christopher became friends and in time joined musical forces to create The Smiles and Frowns.

Our friends could play all sorts of instruments but what could they write about? Adam said: “When I close my eyes, I see cartoons playing in the darkness of my mind, so I usually write about those.” So they set up in the paisley-walled room of Adam’s house, polished their mellotron, tuned guitars and switched on the ancient, magical reel-to-reel recording device.

When Adam and Christopher finished recording they were very pleased with what they had. “But,” a friend  asked, “what’s your bag, how do we musically tag you?”

“Well,” replied the duo, “these are haunted train ride songs, children’s theme music songs and psychedelic science fiction songs.” Their friend left scratching his head; he’d never heard of that pigeon hole before. So I’ll try and fill in the gaps…

Listen to Cornelius, second track on the album and BBC Radio6 favourite.

Brush aside the cobwebs, part the dusty red drapes and enter the world of The Smiles and Frowns, an ethereal, haunting chamber where porcelain dolls peer at you from the gloom, mysterious characters scuttle in the shadows and strange cartoons play on the pock-marked celluloid wall.

Album opener Sam charts the demise of a morally questionable bird, as it flies from dead-end job, to the heady heights of fame before crashing into the soul-crushing depths of chat-show obscurity.  The low-fi production and beautiful, tight harmonies are reminiscent of Jim Noir’s The Tower of Love.

For two gents from Phoenix, The Smiles and Frowns has a very British feel. This side of the Atlantic the sixties psychedelic revolution borrowed heavily from Victorian and Edwardian literature and rites, blending the magical imagery of Lear and Lewis Carroll with lysergic lights. In measured fashion The Smiles and Frowns tip their caps in this direction, with reverb-delayed mellotrons, resonant staccato bass lines and unexpected chord sequences.

Echoes of early Pink Floyd and The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour era reverberate throughout. The melancholic waltz of The March of the Phantom Faces seizes the mind with such power that, without too much effort you will be transported to a discarded picture house, where the spectral janitor rises through the floor to act out a silent soundtrack for the forgotten silver screens.

But there is much more to The Smiles and Frowns than period-sound emulation. The short, tightly produced tracks (eight in total, clocking at little more than 24 minutes in total) evidence an impressive, and often beguiling, song-writing craft. At their best the duo come close to matching Ray Davies’ peaks on Something Else by The Kinks and We Are The Village Green Preservation Society, both musically and lyrically.
 
The Smiles and Frowns is a music-box gem of a debut; no preening, no posturing and certainly no corporate positioning. Just a collection of wonders created and delivered by two men whose minds operate in a sphere that transforms the mundane into the magical.

The Smiles and Frowns have not announced any live dates for the near future. But visit the band’s website and check for future announcements.

Listen to final track from the album – The Echoes of Time