- Opening their debut LP First Body with the most expansive, cavernous and dissonant track on the record is a bold move, but for Melbourne duo Two People, it just feels right.
Phoebe Lou and Joey Clough were thrust into the youth consciousness eight years ago, and were gracing national stages with their band Snakadaktal before even leaving high school. Since then, the band have split up, the pair flipped a dilapidated room in Fitzroy to create a studio space and wrote and recorded their debut album under new moniker Two People
Their friendship acts as a ghost writer on First Body, the intimate nature and shared experience of their partnership became a recurring theme interwoven throughout the record’s nine tracks. This is especially prevalent on cut Phone Call which details the budding, but short lived teen romance between Lou and Clough. The sprawling cut is the centerpiece of the record: amongst the synth and meticulously textured percussive bed simmers Phoebe Lou’s soaring, aching vocal. Her lyrics frame the push and pull of young love: “Watch Me Spend Tomorrow Alone / Your Heart Will Make Me Want You More”.
First single I’m Tied, To You is as expansive as it is restrained, clocking in at just over seven minutes the duo play with space, layering vocal harmonies and sparse sax with rhythmic, understated synth while the lyrics soliloquise an internal battle of fragility and frustration. Wading deeper, second to last track It’s Late is a lesson in the art of contrast: nocturnal, pulsating bass is rippled by Phoebe’s lifting, breathy vocals. This interplay between light and dark, the bubbling, minimalistic tension, it's a cornerstone of the outfit and is underscored by their effortless, celestial sonic simpatico.
The beauty of First Body lies in the in between: the fuzzed out flourishes that separate Two People from the polish and sheen of their electronic contemporaries, in their deliberate use of negative space and the symbiosis of a record built on a partnership spanning years. They edge around the conventional, shy away from the contrived and draw on a deep well of vulnerability that I find myself tumbling down over and over again, desperate for another taste.
- Fiona Priddey.