BETWIXT
Moustache (Archenemy)

Betwixt is a mischievous group, whose name cheekily asks, “If neither here nor there, then where?”  The Boston-based band’s debut may be charmingly surreal, but that is one question they’re more than willing to answer.

Their pedigree is impeccable: guitarist Tom Devaney used to be in noise-pop group Bulkhead; singer Leah Callahan and drummer Dave Nelson were in Turkish Delight.  The Turks created giddy, sometimes sweet, sometimes slightly malicious ear candy that occasionally devolved into anarchy. Betwixt continue in this vein of playful experimentation, tempered by jazzier, more uniform sound – exemplified by the replacement of the former group’s electric can (a coffee can with pickups) by Gordon Wither’s cello.

It had been clear from Turkish Delight songs like jazzy, noirish “Blue Wing” (an unsettling song Callahan adapted from a Langston Hughes poem) that she wanted to transcend her previously one-dimensional band role: their frenzied guitar din more or less forced her to sing aggressively to be heard (of course, she also became the queen of twisted put-downs: from “Smooth Karate”: “Sex with you is like watching kung-fu”).  In Betwixt, Leah’s resolutely adaptable presence seems in keeping with that elusively puckish name, and the sparser, more contained instrumentation frees her to be anything she wants.  On the tongue-in-cheek “Cartoon,” she is “the godforsaken heroine of doom” (a contemporary Lady Lazarus who can’t quite get the hang of the cell phone); on “You Need Us,” she’s kittenish in her brush-off of a potential suitor: “I need you like a fish needs a bicycle.”

Callahan knows how to wrap her voice around lines like that, her sweet/tart vocals coolly self-assured but also vulnerable (“Stay with me forever…” amended by “Stay with me – today…”) and wry (“I laughed at the stars when the asked me just how many times would I fall?  I knew the answer would hurt them so I never answered at all”).  While she muses on the oddities of everyday life, the music follows playfully along.  “Our Tusk” plays like a sequel of sorts to Throwing Muses’ “The River.”  Somber cello – not to mention Callahan’s siren-like ululations – lens an air of inescapable calamity to the song , a magisterial, tragic fairy tale which  occurs somewhere  “way out west, towards the sun” and sounds like Nino Rota transcribed by a cello-led Savage Republic/  “Outgoing Message Theme,” too, is a spaghetti western waltz-time lament, with delicate finger-picked guitar and the twang of lap steel: “Time has twisted all you’ve given me.”  By contrast, songs like “Luck 13” and “Cindy” are sing-songy and unabashedly bubblegum.

Betwixt create satiny torch songs of Southern Gothic flavor and jazzy allure; on Moustache, postpunk tension is welded to a pop sensibility, topped with cool, honeyed, vocals full of pungency.  Betwixt’s twisted valentine sand fractured fairy tales make this and assures and charming debut. – Andrea Feldman