Tender Forever
is the (mostly) one-woman project of French expat
Melanie Valera
, who with her
K
debut creates the kind of music that the label's always had a handle on -- simplistic and charming, with little patches of quirk that make it something more than simply
lo-fi
. Recorded partly in Bordeaux but mostly with
Calvin Johnson
in Olympia,
The Soft and the Hardcore
is both sexy and innocent. On
"Feeling in Love,"
Valera
gets away with sounding childish and randy all at once. She claps her hands in glee, name-checks
Destiny's Child
, and harmonizes with layers of herself over the busy keyboard track.
"Feeling,"
like most of her work, suggests fellow
collaborator
Mirah
.
looks more to
electronics
instead of brushed acoustics, but there's a similarly spare, personal approach for both songwriters, a way of stretching basic singsong melodies so they're meaningful instead of just easy. It doesn't get much simpler or purer than
"Marry Me."
Exchanging her laptop and keyboard for a single acoustic guitar,
picks out a solitary
lullaby
to a faraway lover and lets her syllables linger like the hiss on a transatlantic phone line. Musing on her sexuality and finding, losing, and missing love are themes throughout
. "People told me that you're too sexy for me/But actually I just don't care," she sings in
"Then If I'm Weird I Want to Share,"
and on
"Take It Off"
(as in your shirt) and
"Hot,"
catchy beats and
's accented English combine with general horniness for some
Stereo Total
-style hotness.
is never very far from rudimentary, but every note and lyric on
is close to her heart. ~ Johnny Loftus