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Gourmets will tell you that, while tasting wines or enjoying a meal, you should cleanse your palate from time to time with something light and simple and refreshing—like a sip of water or a light sorbet. While I’m not much of a gourmet, I find that the same is true of music. With all the big sounds out there, it’s nice to be able to cleanse your musical palate from time to time with something that’s light and refreshing—like Brooklyn duo KaiserCartel’s debut album, March Forth.
The songs on March Forth, are simple and sweet, with an almost old-fashioned feel—in the sense that listening to them will inevitably remind you of the good old days. They’ll bring you back to a simpler time, when life was clear and uncomplicated—when you didn’t worry about the grams of fat in your peanut butter sandwich or how silly you looked when you skipped down the street. In fact, the pretty melodies and rich harmonies on March Forth will make you want to skip down the street again. They’re light and airy. They’re breezy and just a little bit folksy. And they’re infectiously cheery.
There’s just something child-like about KaiserCartel’s music. Maybe it’s something about the songs—like the youthful “Season Song,” which almost sounds like something we would have sung while seated cross-legged in a circle around our third-grade teacher and his guitar. Maybe it’s the creative use of instruments—the tambourines and xylophones, the keyboards and cellos, and especially the handclaps, whistling, and toy alarm clocks. But it all makes perfect sense when you find out that—in their other lives—Courtney Kaiser and Benjamin Cartel are both elementary teachers (she teaches music, and he teaches art).
And when you find out that Kaiser and Cartel are a real-life couple, it all makes even more sense. Their closeness is undeniable, and you can imagine them looking each other in the eye and smiling as they harmonize on lyrics like, “Yeah…we got a good thing” or “You’re my favorite song.” Just through their music, you can tell that they’re an adorable couple—the kind that you want to be around because they’re just so…cute. Sure, maybe they gush just a little too much every once in a while, but their cheeriness seems to rub off on everyone around them.
March Forth isn’t the kind of music that you play at a loud, crazy party. It’s not the stuff that you crank up in the car as you battle rush-hour traffic. Instead, it’s the soundtrack to a lazy summer road trip. It’s sitting-on-a-blanket-under-a-tree kind of music. And while it’s not exactly a sing-along kind of album, it’s definitely a hum-along—and even whistle-along—kind of album. Give it a listen, and you’ll find it impossible not to smile.
