Smoosh Act Their Age

Posted in MusicWorld on July 21, 2005

Music is nothing if it’s not conceived for the joy of it. “My favorite thing is how when I play out places, it makes me feel all happy. I like to watch my friends watching me,” confesses Chloe,  one half of Seattle’s Smoosh. The preternaturally gifted duo spearheads a growing movement of young female independent bands with an ingenuous, instinctual wisdom that comes as naturally as their multifaceted, genre-tickling songwriting. Chloe’s older sister Asya, Smoosh’s vocalist and pianist/keyboardist, wails and croons like an old soul with her tiny, tremulous voice. The fearless confidence that often accompanies youth (Asya is 13, Chloe is 11) runs through Smoosh’s pop-based quirk rock with strength and beauty, and people are listening in awe.   

Smoosh was born of natural curiosity. While the family stood in line at Seattle’s Trading Musician store to pay for what they had intended to purchase—a violin—Asya and Chloe wandered upstairs to the percussion room. There, they met Jason McGerr (Death Cab For Cutie), teacher at the renowned Seattle Drum School where Chloe now studies, and left with a $600 drum kit, Jason’s card, and no violin. Asya, having taken several piano lessons that she then aborted because “they made you just play the same thing, and I wanted to make stuff up,” joined in. A small, family-run website was launched that advertised free copies of home recordings. Soon, the duo played at Oregon’s booming, highly influential Rock and Roll Camp for Girls. Smoosh subsequently toured with Jimmy Eat World and played with Cat Power (who paid tribute to the band by lip synching their rap song, “Rad” at 2004’s Sasquatch! Music Festival), Rilo Kiley, Pearl Jam, Death Cab for Cutie, Sleater-Kinney, the Mates of State and the Presidents of the United States of America.

The band also hit 2004’s CMJ Music Festival and South By Southwest 2005. Stunning performances and word of mouth gave way to glowing and awestruck reviews by NME (who called them “the hottest new band in the US underground”), Boston Globe (“truly impressive”), Alternative Press (5 out of 5 stars), Seattle Weekly (“remarkable”), Vice (10 of 10), Devil in Woods (#8 in best of 2004 picks), and many others. Soon national radio and television embraced Smoosh, too.  The band’s Pattern 25 debut, She Like Electric, spent 9 weeks in the CMJ Top 200 charts this year, and charted #27 on Trip Wires’ Top 30…but that’s not all. LA’s influential KROQ and KCRW, Chicago’s WXRT, and Seattle’s KNDD have also leant the duo great airplay. After NPR’s “All Things Considered” and local Seattle NBC affiliate KING TV, ABC affiliate KOMO TV News and KONG TV interviewed the duo, Smoosh landed features on CNN and “The Today Show.” 

All this attention has little to do with the fact that these ladies’ youth is impressive—anyone who investigates Smoosh out of a curiosity for novelty is quickly put in their place. The band’s visibility will continue to increase as it matures along with the public’s conception of what age bracket and gender is conducive to making music.

She Like Electric brims with intensely diverse and magically cohesive pop songs that amaze as they engage. The rich range of the sisters’ emotional spectrum factor as strongly into the flavor as vanilla extract: pure, simple and true. From the joyful and contemplative “To Walk Away From,” to the silly and giggly “The Quack,” to the angry and bittersweet “But Now I Know,” urgency prevails.  Smoosh is, above all, not afraid to make exactly the type of beautiful, varied music they want to. You know why? Because they’re feelin’  it. And so will you.

SOURCEMusicWorld TAGS Pop Musicworld On The Scene Artists Death Cab For Cutie