April 10, 2007
Aversion.com

You always have to be a little suspicious of any bedroom pop outfit that’s too eager to leave the confining comfort and shelter of the bedroom for a place in the big, scary world. So when Postmarks front-woman Tim Yehezkely finally takes the tape recorder out of the spare room and into the public sphere – all with a little trepidation, mind you – it’s only natural that The Postmarks sounds a little hesitant, shy and nervous. We’d probably start to wonder if it didn’t.

As Yehezkley and her band make the transition from a private to public, they can at least rest content on the knowledge that they’re getting started right. If The Postmarks is any measure, the trio should have made the transition a while ago. Between Yehezkley’s fragile, yet confident, vocals and the sweetly unfolding chamber pop woven by guitarist Christopher Mull, The Postmarks emerge as champions of the soft-spoken and champions of hesitant pop.
The Postmarks weaving teenage symphonies to God that check everything from the Wilson brothers’ Beach Boy genius an Burt Bacharach’s mastery of smooth melodies to a generation of withdrawn home-recording, recluses like Belle and Sebastian and The Concretes. Although dashes of added instrumentation (strings, harpsichord, flute, toy piano and vibraphone, among others, all make appearances on this album), Mull’s meat and potatoes is basic guitar pop with an emphasis on rainy-day melodies. “Summers Never Seem to Last” finds the dark side of the Beach Boys’ endless-summer pop, as autumnal piano melodies and a bass line as warm and rich as percolating coffee gives Yehezkley the perfect backdrop to mope about a doomed romance, while “Looks Like Rain” reworks AM gold, twee vocals and understated indie-pop melodies for a tune stuck between its gray-skies subject matter (another breakup) and bubbly pop. “Weather the Weather” offers a dose of bedroom sunshine that’s free from seasonal weather patterns. When it’s not tying love lives and atmospheric conditions together with at-times trite metaphors, The Postmarks is busy dishing out soft, restrained and oftentimes hesitant chamber/bedroom pop.
The Postmarks manage to keep that naivety, coyness and fragile charms about themselves on their debut. The Postmarks isn’t going to come crashing into the underground’s upper echelons, but that’s probably just how a timid little band like The Postmarks would have it.

- Jennifer Doyle