Record Shopping with Au Revoir Simone Issue #40

By Cory Robertson
Published: June 1st, 2009 | 12:00pm

From matching hairstyles to matching affinities for French pop music, Annie Hart, Erika Forster, and Heather D’Angelo are a like-minded yet diverse trio. The three members of Au Revoir Simone — all of whom sing and play the keyboard (D’Angelo also takes charge of the drum machine) — seem to exist in perfect harmony with one another. The band’s latest album, Still Night, Still Light, exudes a self-possessed forward drive, each song leading smoothly into the next.

NOT PRETTY
When the members of Au Revoir Simone gather at Sound Fix Records in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for a Venus Zine sponsored shopping spree, they’re just as centered and lighthearted as their music would lead you to expect. After a few minutes of browsing, Forster exclaims, “Keith! How long have you been standing there?” Their unannounced friend is none other than Keith Murray of We Are Scientists, clad in hipster-granny glasses and sporting his signature side-combed bangs. “I’ve been shopping with them before — not pretty,” he says playfully.

READY, SET, SHOP!
While Hart buzzes between Indian sarod-master Ali Akbar Khan and the Flaming Lips, D’Angelo spends most of her time in the electronica section. “I like indie rock, too,” she says. “But I find it pretty boring a lot of the time.” D’Angelo combs through albums by Francoise Hardy, Lindstrom & Prins Thomas, and Fripp & Eno, continuously texting with her boyfriend to make sure she doesn’t end up buying something they already have.

IT TAKES A VILLAGE
Sweetly composed, Forster points out local band Chairlift (known to the world at large through “Bruises,” a gently bouncy song featured in a 2008 iPod commercial) before turning to singer-songwriter Marissa Nadler, whom she recently caught in a tiny Lower East Side club. “She has a super-beautiful voice and really mystical, cool lyrics,” Forster says of Nadler.

The running theme, from Sound Fix itself to the friend-filled record selection on the shelves, is one of community. “You feel kind of excited for all of your friends,” Hart says, gazing at the new releases rack. “All of a sudden it feels like just playing in bands and making friends with people — it’s just another thing that people do, and it’s become so real and so normal and so ordinary.”