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Island Song - Christy & Emily

I could understand if you thought this was a little underwhelming as an expression of island. It doesn't sear your skin with the roar of tropical sun, it doesn't whisper of palms or boast a melody that sticks to your soles like wet sand (not immediately anyway). It doesn't have the coy hipshake of Hawaiian hula or the generous bone-rattle of Jamaican dub. No, it's island second-hand, muted. Island from a Brooklyn bedroom. A song that announces its remove with dust-spitting pops and clicks and its sentiment with the kitsch of Wurlitzer, drum-machined bongos and rainbow-hued bird chorus. And yet there's something real in it: the melancholy of that kitsch. It's the sadness in sun-faded wallpaper of package-tour hotels, in crowded shelves of unsold plastic tchotchkes, in paper umbrellas drooping over rum-and-fruit drinks. It's kitsch that speaks in a roundabout way of the hard-felt ache of abandonment and supplies -- in the face of an onrushing season of storms -- some measure of courage.

Christy & Emily's Gueen's Head (Social Registry, eMusic) is a surprising little gem of mostly successful folk-pop experiments. Myspace