In a similar vein to the girly country folk pop that Scandinavia seems to produce en masse, Swiss-German duo Boy have entered the scene with their debut release Mutual Friends.
From track one “This Is The Beginning,” the LP is set up to be a fairly light-hearted recording. Featuring robust vocals, flowing acoustic guitar, bells, and sweet piano accompaniments, Valeska Steiner and Sonja Glass have laid down a very clean and thoughtfully constructed piece of work.
Boy’s adherence to pop music convention, though, is a little detrimental to the finished product.
At times the songwriting, while endearing, lacks substance and feels forced in its rhyming. For example, on “Waitress” Steiner sings: “While daylight is fading / while traders are trading / while the jukebox is playing / while lovers are dating / the waitress is waiting.”
The album is a safe one, with similarly structured tunes and repetitive melodies throughout such that the composition arrangements can feel a little formulaic.
Mutual Friends is an album that never really takes off, provides something new, or hits a climactic point, teetering dangerously into the realm of just being good quality background music.
The girls do show a small appetite for experimentation at the end of “Silver Streets” – drums, then vocals and guitar drop out to be replaced with a piano chime motif and the sound of guitar reverb, a sound that blends seamlessly into the final track “July.”
To harness this sound completely would neglect Boy’s pop aesthetic, though incorporating more of these riskier aethetics could be a step in the right direction for a sophomore release.
