Aberdeen

Homesick and Happy to be Here (Better Looking)
by Jamie Kiffel

Lost in the bright blue air above flower-speckled, rolling Scottish hills, love thoughts fly on gentle breaths of music: Sunny, sighing brogue rising and falling on a warm wind. This is the sentimental pop sound of Aberdeen, a band that shares its name with a Scottish land of storybook castles. With singer Beth’s flute-like midrange voice leading the lilting acoustic guitar tunes, the songs are as flowery and carefree-sounding as a stroll through a European daydream. Unexpected twists amidst the major chords include such lines as “I liked you better with your trousers around your ankles,” though for the most part, these are only love songs, the kind of emotional fancies that rule our realism and baffle our vocabularies. A musical state of playful joys, Aberdeen is a place where deep meaning simply doesn’t matter as much as tossing your head back and feeling sweet fantasy blow breathy through your ears.
(11041 Santa Monica Blvd. PMB 302 Los Angeles, CA 90025)