Rhye

One Liner: Beautiful falsetto-driven chill tunes

Wikipedia Genre: Alternative R&B, downtempo, soul, sophisti-pop
Home:  Toronto

Poster Position: 12
Day: Saturday at 4:30
Weekend Two Only.

Thoughts: Oh no.  There is a musical genre called sophisti-pop?  That is not OK.  Well, let's look it up.  "The term has been applied to music that emerged during the mid-1980s in the UK which incorporated elements of jazz, soul and pop. Music so classified often made extensive use of electronic keyboards, synthesizers and polished arrangements, particularly horn sections."  Huh.  The first song sounds like Sade.

I'll give the group bonus points for the sexy album covers.  But I won't say the music does much for me: on one hand, it is pretty, sleepy, sensuous, same; on the other hand, it can be more upbeat, but still kind of sleepy/chilled.  Maybe that is what "downtempo" is all about...  The top track is called "Open," with 51 million streams.

Of note:

1. That song is very pretty.
2. I would like to go on that vacation right now.
3. That is a dude singing that song.

I thought for sure that was a female vocalist.  Nope.  The whole band is apparently a dude named Michael Milosh, who collaborates with different people but mainly does this on his own after breaking up with a Danish dude (Robin Hannibal) who helped him with his first album.  By the way, Wikipedia says that their vocals were likened to Sade (boom, I'm smart!) and The XX.

Two albums, 2013's Woman and 2018's Blood.  That top single up above is from the first album, as is their second-most listened-to track, "The Fall."  The top track from their new album is "Song For You," which has 6.2 million streams.

Once again, supremely gorgeous music.  Simple instrumentation, lovely voice, aching lyrics of love.  I'll also credit them with having stunning women in their videos.

And finally, because you get the idea now of these cats, here is a Tiny Desk concert.

All those fake candles are distracting as shit.  Because if they were real candles, then all the tchotchkes on those shelves would be on fire immediately, and NPR would burn down, and then I wouldn't get the news in the morning on my drive to work, and it would be sad.  Actually, I might take that back, I can't listen to the damn news anymore without feeling awful for a couple of hours, so maybe yes, let's burn down NPR and I won't have to think about horrible things happening because of our government.  Ahem.  Sorry.  Back to the music.  No, actually, hold on.  What I wish I could see right now is the video footage of some poor intern rolling up with 278 fake candles and having to flip the tiny switches on the bottom of each one and getting them placed just so to make this hot-detective-in-the-bathtub-after-a-long-day-fighting-crime vibe a reality.  

But, as for the music, yet again, extremely pretty stuff, just not much excitement in there.  This is good makeout music for those of you who still need to makeout for hours instead of just getting down to brass tacks.

I doubt I'd go see this played live.  Seems like a nice show to see in a tiny theater, not something to go stand up in a crowd to hear on a hot Texas day.