Bundled up in thick harmonies

Here Comes Winter

Parker and Lily Manifesto Records

… Here Comes Winter

Parker and Lily Manifesto Records

Parker and Lily’s versatile work reminds the listener of everything from cheesy 19mcm ’50s appliance commercials to spy films to a rendezvous at a luau.

Here Comes Winter, the follow-up to 2001’s Hello Halo, is an album that consists almost entirely of minimalist and melancholy love songs. NYC-based Parker Noon and Lily Wolfe are formerly of Valentine Six, a harder-rocking, more characteristically New York band. Unlike V6, the duo abandons roughness for more reflective, aesthetically pleasing music.

Parker and Lily manage to pull off a retro yet futuristic sound using vintage drum machines and analog organs, along with a whining, slide guitar reminiscent of the ’60s Larry Carlton instrumental, “Sleepwalking.” They couple their surreal, unobtrusive sound with a travel theme (“In Bonn,” “Bridge and Tunnel” and “Interior: Airport”) with ghostly, subdued vocals. This combination yields a number of pop-noir tunes suitable for swooning.

Here Comes Winter includes several instrumental tracks, one of which being the two-minute opus “Idle in Idlewild.” This composition employs xylophone-esque keyboard notes layered over more debase church bell-like tones and soft, scratching sounds, reminding the listener to slow down and reminisce a bit.

Much of the album’s overdub recording happened while Parker and Lily toured, using an eight-track tape machine to record vocal and guitar parts and provide an effective ambience. Birds can be heard chirping on “Three-day Life,” and a car horn is heard in the background of “Snow Day.”

The album’s most playful, upbeat portion is the second track, “My Apartment Complex,” on which Wolfe croons the lyrics “Contract with insomnia/ with the black cat/ of teenage love.” The song “Motel Lights” epitomizes the album, with its far away feel and the lyrics “… lipstick on a book of matches/ blue light in patches with the volume down/ motel lights are cold/ and slowly they fold/ their voltage to crowns …”

Here Comes Winter is sure to please whenever the desire to travel to a far less jarring time and place strikes.