- Italians Do It Better have thus far really failed to click for me (most un-memorably with the lumpen After Dark compilation), but Houston's Twisted Wires have served up something far more interesting in "One Night at the Raw Deal." Tasteful, even stately, it's a balmy summer tune that evokes far more imagery than genre tags or band references. I catch the vaguest impressions, of Rago & Farina, of British raincoat pop, of sombre Teutonic vocalists, but they drift off into the chunky, unexpected early house synth workout of the final half.
The ingredients here are disarmingly simple—a hazy, floodlit vocal; lambent guitar strums; iambic drum beat; slowly building synth. It's in their assembly that they shine, sequenced like the ebb and flow of a late, lazy evening in July. Present in vocal and instrumental versions (along with a pleasant guitar-and-vocal a cappella), there's little by which we can judge Twisted Wires' range. No matter. What we've got here is welcome enough: an intriguing and promising debut from Twisted Wires and a nice change of pace from Italians.
Tracklist A One Night At The Raw Deal (Vocal)
B1 One Night At The Raw Deal (Instrumental)
B2 One Night At The Raw Deal (Vocals + Guitars)