Viva Voce - Alive With Pleasure

Viva Voce
Alive With Pleasure

If you like the other married (or divorced) dynamic duos Arcade Fire or Quasi, there’s a pretty good chance you will dig Viva Voce. Beautiful and engaging quirk rock that sounds semi-filtered through Jason Lytle’s or Aaron Espinoza’s eyes.

On their latest LP The Heat Can Melt Your Brain Anita and Kevin Robinson carefully construct catchy melodies and inject a tipsiness into their tunes by utilizing an arsenal of musical weapons. Ranging from vibraphone and kazoo to celeste and simple handclaps, their instrumentation choices are top notch. The flavor is eccentric and edgy, aurally exciting, and liable to make you jiggle around uncontrollably in a spastic way. Yeah, that good.

The title track, Alive With Pleasure, buzzes with organ, drum shmooshes, and Anita’s velvety voice. They cram a lot ‘o craft into just this one track, and the going only gets better from there.

What is most amazing about these songs, or perhaps the very reason that makes them great, is the home production ethic that they’ve stamped into the music. Doing it yourself takes no brains in these digital days. But if you have the talent and moxie that these two do, then doing it youself becomes no brainer. Although the band is on the fairly large indie label, Minty Fresh, it’s still clear that they still have a big hand in the recording process. Viva, Viva Voce!

Viva Voce’s website

by Bryan