By Brian Tucker

Pronounced “sweetheart,” Southport duo Karl Kuehn (Museum Mouth) and Becca High perform all the instruments on their first full-length album. Recorded in the North Carolina mountains last winter the album’s sound is a vivid contrast to those surroundings.

The result, Compact Disc, is fantastic dreamy pop music that’s noisy, part rock, and part chamber music delivered in quick-synth fashion. Rich in ambiance, fuzzy sonics and Kuehn’s throaty metallic vocals, Compact Disc harkens back to quick, blistering songs. The majority of the material clocks in at around two minutes, never seeming to travel too fast, and leaves the ear satiated.

It’s full of anti-self-aggrandizing and honest material, songs of openness and truth. “I am in Misery” as a title belies the pop confection the song truly is. Of the scant lyrics, Kuehn sings, “Fake sentiment is just apathy/We both know I’m underwhelming/It’s a fact/Given our history.” And like “So Dumb” the song is one of many blatantly forthright, no matter the coarseness. In the house SWTHRT has built here there are no curtains.

“Aloha Y’all” has a Japanese feel in its guitar playing mixed with stick driven percussion. “I Hate This” wails, its siren guitar prefacing an Irish battle cry. “Terror Dread” feels mechanized, crisp guitars spitting out piercing notes. “No Holiday” has a Killing Joke feel, especially on the drums. It pogo’s about, single guitar notes chiming against thumping electronic drumming. “Boys With Problems” tumbles along like Chin Up Chin Up on their first album. High’s keyboards on “Sunroof” end the album on a lofty note, celestial like a shiny wall of sound.

SWTHRT’s music (much of it free to download along with singles, b-sides) casts its eyesight to shiny, metallic sounds of the early eighties – bands like Joy Division, Love & Rockets, Jesus and Mary Chain. It’s a sound that was pummeled by more accessible mainstream music of the period and now getting heaps of attention these days from the likes of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Dum Dum Girls.

The result is a sound that once seemed to be owned by The Cure is crawling out of the cellar and resurfacing in great albums. SWTHRT has one with Compact Disc, utilizing lyrics saying more with less and a kinetic, catchy sound that will coalesce greatly live with full instrumentation.