Has there ever been any positive, upbeat music made that referenced needles? I mean, the first track that springs to mind is Nine Inch Nails‘ “Hurt”, after all. Hardly uplifting. The closest I’ve managed is Rammstein‘s “Rein Raus”, which features the sumptuous piece of imagery, “Ein Elefant im Nadelohr” – “An elephant in the eye of a needle”. Yes, that would be a charming sex reference; no, I’m not convinced that counts as positive or upbeat either.
Needle are not about to change that state of play. The San Francisco duo can knock out a lovely track, but it’s not going to be the ray of light that pulls you out of a pit of depression. Frankly, though, I couldn’t care less, because like I say: they can knock out a lovely track. Composed of singer and multi-instrumentalist Julie Sea, and multi-instrumentalist Steve Beck, they make an understated, lo-fi brand of folky rock that will have you in tears one moment, and dozing off with a great, dopey grin the next.
To these ears at least, Julie’s voice is a breathier Emma Pollock, or (who’d have thought it?) Hope Sandoval. There’s actually an official treaty amongst everyone who writes about music to mention Mazzy Star whenever an artist makes vaguely folkish, vaguely psychedelic rock. I don’t feel too guilty since Needle did bring it up themselves. Another immediate similarity is Cowboy Junkies, and the lead track (“Oceans”) from their new EP (“Saint Timothy’s”) bears more than a passing resemblance to Yo La Tengo‘s sublime “Autumn Sweater”. That’s about as high as praise gets from me.
What should quickly be coming apparent is that Needle are mellow. If they have a fault, it’s that they almost never break with that subdued mood for a bit of light relief, but there are enough changes of texture to keep things moving all the same. Their debut album, “Songs Your Mother Never Sang You”, actually came out back in 2006 – as always, nothing but the very cutting edge in new music here at LBYB – and it seems almost unreasonable that they’ve stayed so firmly under the radar since then.
Hopefully “Saint Timothy’s” will see them reaching a bigger crowd. They certainly deserve it. I’m not saying it’s going to convert the Saturday night pre-party warm up crowd, but anyone who enjoys some lo-fi downtempo is in for a treat. “Oceans” is available to download free via Soundcloud, or you can follow the links to stream the whole shebang.
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