Album Reviews

Album Review: Oh, Atoms – You Can’t See the Stars From Here (Sony/ATV/Little Victories)

By | Published on Monday 2 February 2009

Oh Atoms

With eight instruments played between them – including the theremin, violin, mandolin, and likely a whole host of others ending with ‘in’ – whimsical folk fanciers Oh, Atoms are like Margot & The Nuclear So And So’s or The Arcade Fire but without the mass number of band members. As a duo, though, Gwen Cheeseman and Marc Withecomb create more than enough sound to go around a few concert halls and then some. ‘You Can’t See The Stars From Here’ is the band’s debut LP and is inspired by tea dances, Victorian darkness, dead film stars and suspicious circumstances. A strange mixture of images, some might say, but upon listening to the record – and what a bloody pretty record it is – the duo’s vision seeps through further as each track melts by, summery and lo-fi at its best, and reflective and moody at its darkest. ‘Silver Spoon’ is as eerie as a B-movie set in Kansas with its original use of theremin, banjos and violins, while ‘Five Over Stripe’ is a jumpy little piano tune that spins into euphoric strings after the initial verse. ‘You Can’t See The Stars From Here’ is a beautiful record better off without the fine tuning – fanciful, youthful, playful, vintage-tinged rural pop. TW

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