by Matt Watton (@brotinus)
The Spatulas are the project of Miranda Soileau-Pratt, an artist equal parts poet and bandleader. Their debut LP. Beehive Mind, is an exercise in space and subtlety, at once unassuming and arresting. Coming close on the heels of last December’s EP, March Chant, The Spatulas seem to be bursting with artistic desire. Upon first encounter, the music feels twee and almost cutesy, but it does everything it can to resist these monikers, and what emerges is a deceptively vigorous slew of sounds and words that tiptoe into your earways to take root and languish there.
Hailing from Portland, Oregon and now located in Cambridge, Massachussetts, Soileau-Pratt formed The Spatulas as a kind of bi-coastal artistic collective to embrace, enliven, and enmatter her songs. Sonically, the melodies and instrumentation thrive on simplicity. Songs linger on one or two chords, steadfastly if not furiously strummed, while bass lines meander in and out with prudently selected notes. The drums embrace a Mo Tucker minimalism of tambourine and shaker and softly beaten snare. The result is more than the sum of its parts: the songs bounce around and enchant with a kind of jaunty energy and groovy slither. (This reviewer can’t help but think of the Velvets, and the tunes on Beehive Mind seamlessly glide between the upbeat sunrise of “Sunday Morning” and the driving crawl of “Ocean.”)
This less-is-more approach never succumbs to boredom or self-indulgence. Songs like “Somewhat Alike” and “Facedown” relish in a neat interplay of guitars, with Soileau-Pratt’s deliberate down-strums complemented by guitarist Lila Jarzombek’s racing, jangly skronk. The tunes eschew choruses in favor of repetition, hammering home their point with hypnotic zeal. On the punkiest tracks (“Suzie Girl” and “Shedded Life”) the band approximates a kind of quaint garage rock, while the most ballad-like songs encourage a slow-dancing sway (“The Long Way,” “Get Along”). The overall impression is a musical ambivalence: there’s something somber and introspective in the sparse openness of these songs, but they remain buoyant and full of life, both uplifting and tethered.
What ties the songs together is Soileau-Pratt’s effortless and understated voice. One gets the impression that while not a natural singer, she discovered her voice out of an irrepressible inner necessity to vocalize her poetry. The marriage of her lyricism and vocal timbre imbue the songs with an enigmatic immediacy. The lyrics on “Maya” approach a Romantic mysticism whose abstraction nevertheless conveys a concrete desire for resilience, connection, love. “Mother Brother” revels in wordplay and the hard “k” sound (“comforting creature, creature comforts,” “crotchety cackling and back to a frown”) to create a song that is both jubilant and forlorn. “Beehive Mind” is a sensitive, perspicacious commentary on beauty and human imperfection; it is the only song with discernible vocal harmonies – a sparkling textural layer that stands out among the minimalism of the rest of the record.
Collectively, these songs are beautiful in their subtlety. We are encouraged to appreciate them like the sea: one can dive deep into the minute details of melody and voice and word, or one can let the sounds wash over you with an ambient absorption. Where exactly the magic of The Spatulas come from – the earnest interplay of bandmates, the depths of the songcraft, its warmth and its earthiness – remains mysterious, but it is a mystery well worth exploring.