The Postal Service – We Will Become Silhouettes

The Postal Service always teeters on the edge of being too twee... and _We Will Become Silhouettes_ showcases this fine line. The light glitchiness help leaven Gibbard's lyric, which themselves walk the line of precious and meaningful. "Be Still My Heart" grounds itself with a deeper bassline to counterbalance the sweet, if silly, romantic tendencies. Styrofoam, in his own work, has leaned increasingly on vocalists, and on his mix of "Nothing Better," adds an appealing crunciness to the track. Matthew Dear takes on "We Will Be Become Silhouettes" by stripping out the rhythm except for a click track and filling the background with broken, disembodied voices -- a surprise, considering how much rhythm plays into his own work -- but here, it supplies a nice contrast to the original.

This is easily the oddest record in my bag at the moment. The Mattew Dear remix is one of those leftfield jems that makes for fun mixing and spontainious hippee dancing when hearing this. Its mostly beatless though and it's truly up to the DJ to make this record work. Still the pay off is great. Could have been cut a little better though, have to crank the gain up to hear it properly.

For me, this is the least impressive of the three singles from "Give Up." I'll start and say that Silhouettes wasn't my favorite track from the album, but it is by no means bad.

From here, Be Still My Heart is a happy little "I just fell in love" ditty in Postal Service style, with enough electronic pops to fit well with Styrofoam's following remix. I really like this track, and it is tied as my favorite track on this single. Next, Stryrofoam's remix of Nothing Better is really grand, given that you love the glitch/IDM style of Styrofoam as much as I do. The last track is nothing special. I've found Mattthew Dear's work to be a mixed bag, and this is pretty mixed. Somehow, it lacks life. Perhaps the overly-flat tempo, or the guitar doesn't work for me - I can't quite put solid words on why.