W♥M (Archive): Mixel Pixel

Mixel Pixel

Mixel Pixel (MySpace) is one of those "cute" bands whose sugary songs and kindergarten melodies usually make my teeth ache. They've even been dubiously graced with the abhorrent adjective "twee," which pretty much means "as sickeningly precious as an army of hummels and giant-eyed puppy paintings." The cover of their latest album, Let's Be Friends, is a crowd of little cartoon characters reminiscent of the doodles that I sketched in the margins of my notebooks in grade school. Now, I'm certainly not one of those stuffy critics who thinks childlike, let's-just-have-fun-and-write-some-nifty-little-songs music is inherently bad--but generally, the kind of over-self-consciously "cute" music typified by, say, the soundtrack to Juno just leaves a bad aspartame taste in my mouth. So why, then, do I like Mixel Pixel so much?

The answer's simple: their songs are fun and catchy, but behind the toy sounds and candycoated melodies, there's some real depth to Mixel Pixel's lyrics that give their youthful music a very grown-up appeal.

Mixel Pixel's history has a lot to do with their experienced sound. In 1995, founder Rob Corradetti was inspired to begin experimenting with recording by everything-and-the-kitchen-sink musical experimentalists like Beck and Ween, and was joined by collaborator Matt Kaukeinen when Rob relocated to Delaware in 1997. They released their first album, Mappyland, in 2001, after the duo had moved to Brooklyn. With the addition of third member Kaia Wong, the band was complete and began building a substantial following in the US and Canada with their adventurous music and imaginative live performances. To date, they've released a number of independent albums and three LPs on indie labels, the third and latest of which, Let's Be Friends, is now out on Mental Monkey Records.

MP's music is a playful composite of sounds: guitars, synths, old 1980s Casio keyboard rhythms, and sounds produced by a variety of musical toys. This gives them a very intimate kind of sound that immediately calls to mind visions of teenagers writing songs in someone's bedroom littered with toy keyboards and Fisher-Price drumsets. The production is much better than you'd imagine, though, as is the quality of the songwriting because, remember, Mixel Pixel have been around the block a few times. Though their music may hearken back to childhood noodlings with Mattel pianos, their songs are written from a mature perspective that nonetheless has not abandoned the glee of youth.

Let's Be Friends is a warm, tender little album of songs about friendship, very obviously written from the heart. Here's the band's official story behind the album:

Rob and Kaia wrote Let's Be Friends in the spring of 2007 following parallel break-ups from long term relationships. Helping each other get through tough times, they channeled their experiences - both concerning shared life on the road with the band and as individuals - into a semi-fictional, mostly-factual batch of songs.

At the core, Let's Be Friends is about a boy and a girl who are best friends in a band - in the Big City. It's about their friendship but it's also about their individual desires to find love, to seek adventure, and to follow their dreams. On a broader level it's about loving one another - not as lovers - but as friends.

Mixel Pixel - Sinking Feeling

"What Ever Happened To One" opens the album with an 8-bit Casio beat that soon blossoms into a pleasant guitar riffs and synths that support Rob and Kaia's duet vocals. Though the song has a shimmery, upbeat sound, the lyrics speak of tough matters: at one point, Rob sings, "My parents are dead, they're up in the sky," and Kaia answers, "My parents divorced when I was five" but later the two come together to deliver the line, "You found me on a planet of five billion people" that hints at the power of friendship to overcome life's difficulties. "Sinking Feeling" has a touch of The Raveonettes in its occasional bursts of distorted guitars but is primary built of a pure acoustic guitar melody and a robotic rhythm and catchy lyrics that speak of everything from puffy stickers to French ticklers to cats lying in the sun. Even a track with a title as eye-rollingly cute as "Favorite Sweatshirt On" reveals a more experienced side, as does the title track, "Let's Be Friends," which reveals that the lines about parents in the first song were flat-out lies. In this way, the album depicts the growth and development of friendship in all its many aspects, the good as well as the not-so-good. "Fake Girlfriend," with its cheap, hollow beat and zippy melody, is a highlight as Rob compares the false love of a "fake girlfriend" to the true, solid love of a good companion. Finally, the album ends with the somewhat melancholy, but ultimately reassuring "Distant Station," in which Kaia affirms, "We only have so much time together before we die / so that is why I want to be your friend forever / on this little planet." This is not some saccharine, all-too-typical love song, but a final summation of the album's main point: boys and girls don't have to be lovers to love on another unconditionally.

Let's Be Friends is ultimately a sort of concept album that sounds a bit like Beck collaborating with Suzanne Vega, whose sunny music will bring a smile to your face even as the songs themselves deal with heartbreak, uncertainty, and other rocky subjects. It's consistently uplifting without suffering from forced cheerfulness, and at just a few minutes over a half hour long, it doesn't overstay its welcome or overstate its message. It's...comforting. Listening to this album will make you feel warm and fuzzy, but won't drown you in a false sense of oh-everything's-just-so-wonderful security. And that's how Mixel Pixel can be both cute and substantial at the same time.

I'm going to give this album to my best friend/pseudo-adopted sister Jamie as a belated birthday present this year. Fellas, ladies, if you've got a great friend of the opposite sex, I suggest you do the same. In a world supersaturated with albums about love and loss, it's nice to see a record that affirms the power of plain ol' friendship, which is always there for everybody (hopefully) even when the greatest love and the greatest loss are gone.

Oh, and get out there and see the band play! They'll be performing on September 26 at Bodega in Brooklyn, New York--and won't be playing live again until November 25 (at the Cake Shop, again in Brooklyn, with Yip-Yip)!

Links: mixelpixel.com myspace.com/mixelpixel