Viva Voce

Lovers, Lead The Way!
The Heat Can Melt Your Brain (Amore!Phonics)

By Arianna Stern
Published: December 11th, 2007 | 2:47pm

Portland husband-wife duo Viva Voce re-released two of its most popular albums as a double-disc set on its own label, Amore!Phonics. 2003’s Lovers, Lead the Way! plays the same way as the original, as does 2004’s The Heat Can Melt Your Brain, though the latter has eight bonus tracks. Not that, in this case, the original albums left much room for improvement: both set a tone that teeters between heartbroken and hopeful, blending shoegaze with elements of rocknroll.

More importantly, both records showcased the band’s knack for creating lo-fi atmospherics by filtering guitarist-vocalist Anita Robinson’s sweet voice through layers of static. Combined with Kevin Robinson’s suspenseful drumming, the band releases this set to an audience rightfully eager to revisit Viva Voce’s woozy pop.

Looking at the album in retrospect, Lovers, Lead the Way! may have had a quiet but profound impact on bands in the first half of this decade. The driving guitar and lilting vocal melody of “Wrecking Ball” seems a likely influence the Fiery Furnaces’ early releases. “Perpetual No” starts with feather-soft vocal and guitar melodies and suddenly shifts tempo at the end of the song, when sometime-vocalist Kevin Robinson joins in with Anita over a rollicking drum beat and winding guitar riff. Perhaps similar shifts in tempo and tone occur on the Arcade Fire’s Funeral by coincidence, or maybe the band was listening to Viva Voce.

The Heat Can Melt Your Brain continues along Lovers’ dizzy, pretty arc, with a somewhat more ambient feel. Memorably, “Mixtape = Love” wraps a rubbery guitar line around the lyric “I dubbed the tunes in perfect form / To say what I could never voice.”

As for the bonus materials, they differ little from the already-released songs, though again, that’s not a bad thing. Tunng’s remix of “Wrecking Ball” makes the otherwise bouncy song more atmospheric, while the live version gives it a pleasing hard edge. The “Lesson No. 1 demo” sounds like a jangly, stripped-down version of the previously released version. In other words, the difference between the bonus tracks and their in-studio kin might only have meaning for dedicated Viva Voce fans, and could make the asking price a bit steep for curious newcomers. But even if the two-disc set is not for you, either individual album would make a good introduction to the group’s dreamy but urgent music.