Death & Vanilla

The background: Last week saw the sad passing of the great Michael Brown, the largely unsung genius behind the Left Banke. We thought it only right and proper, for this week’s slot, to try and find, in his honour, a new band operating in that rarefied Brown realm of late-60s baroque/psychedelic harmony pop. And here they are: Death and Vanilla – who may or may not have acquired that sobriquet from a hipster band-name generator – put baroque pop through a 90s dreampop filter. Their music variously recalls the eerie, haunted ambience of Angelo Badalamenti/Julee Cruise’s Twin Peaks soundtrack, Stereolab/Broadcast’s experimental vision of 50s lounge muzak/exotica and French 60s pop, or the narcotic country-noir of Mazzy Star. That’s when they’re just being excellent. They really take off on tracks such as Time Travel, when they use their panoply of vibraphones, organs, tremolo guitars, Moogs and Mellotrons, harpsichords and wind chimes in the service of classic pop.