all boy/all girl had its modest beginnings when theatrical vocalist and front woman Danielle Lovier first started playing music with experimental composer and bassist Nicholas Rahn in Philadelphia in 2010. When the two began playing in Rittenhouse Square Park for spare change, there was an instant, explosive chemistry. After touring the US for three months as a duo, they found themselves living in New York City, writing and recording an EP of contemporary-classical-leaning pop songs. Their new album, Slagroom, meaning 'whipped cream' in Dutch, plays out like the cover art, a gleaming, saccharine dollop in a claustrophobic soiled cubicle. It was recorded and mixed by experimental/noise purveyors, Machines With Magnets, in Pawtucket, RI. On opening track "Living Room" Lovier contemplates a stagnant routine asking, "When we were dying in the living room, did we feel anything at all? Were we even alive when we were lying in the watered lawn?" Meanwhile, guitar and drums navigate seasick passages, regularly establishing and breaking harmonic and metric form before locking in to a wholesome 4/4 pop groove. Elsewhere on the album, tracks such as "Pigeon" and "Threnody" go to brooding and unapologetic places. Rogowski's vaulting melodies shimmer above oblique harmonic movement while Mandel and Levinson contribute lush textures interwoven with nascent counterpoint.
