Muller and Patton, Muller and Patton

Just when I’ve figured that the world’s pretty much had its fill of “two-name” pop duos — I mean, c’mon, Simon & Garfunkel were the high water mark, and from there it’s been downhill to the likes of Jackopierce — here comes the eponymous debut from Muller and Patton, a law firm-sounding duo otherwise known as Jaye Muller (vocals, piano, keys, guitars, and drums) and Ben Patton (only vocals, guitars, and bass — I guess he’s the slacker of the duo? Ah, but he writes the lyrics…) to prove me wrong. And from the very start, I’ve got some problems with it. For one thing, anybody who titles a song “After You Cum” or sings sexual double-entendres about condoms (“Life Preserver”) really just needs to be smacked and told to cut it out; it’s a symptom of the irrepressibly cheeky, look-how-clever-and-naughty-we’re-being feel to the whole thing, and in general that bugs the crap out of me.

Luckily for M&P, they also happen to have an incredible knack for harmonies (seriously, I haven’t heard anything like this in a while) and know their way around a pop song. Sure, songs like “We Oughta Work Together” and “I Want My Mommy” sound at first like bad, bad ideas made real, but they’re also intensely catchy and sugary-sweet, at times nearing the pop brilliance of Jellyfish or Great Divide-era Semisonic. The music’s buoyant and clean-sounding, the vocals soar and dance around one another, and the goofy lyrics actually work to make the songs on Muller and Patton endearing, evoking Harry Nilsson or even Randy Newman with the over-the-top wordplay. By the end of it, they’ve managed to break through the defenses of even a jaded music critic like myself, and I’m nodding my head along and smiling. Maybe that cheekiness thing works after all…