What Does This Knob Do?
The duo’s timely log-on is not only on-brand for them, but perhaps even more so, a skill their trade of nonstop musicianship has forced them to adopt as second nature. They spent a majority of the past few months gig-hopping across the US in the confines of their upcoming EP’s namesake — a 1981 Toyota Celica affectionately named Angelo — and even though the transportational weight of tour may no longer need to be hauled for now, the emotional baggage remains a lingering presence. Angelo was conceived from a brutal post-release stretch in which, within weeks of one another, Murphy’s father and both of Stuart’s parents passed away in unexpected fashion. The only way they sought to make sense of the impossible was to do what they’ve always known to do: move. “There was just so much grief that we were deeply experiencing,” Murphy says, “and to pinpoint my own existence, it felt so right to just make music, and to explore my physicality in the world.”
It’s difficult not to explore one’s physicality when Brijean is on the radio, and, clocking in at a compact 20 minutes and change, Angelo masters the impossible feat of making the task of standing still even more challenging. “Shy Guy,” the third track on the EP, sees Murphy croon like a whispering grandmother nursing a wound — though a song later, on the Daft Punk-evocative title cut, her vocal register transforms into something cyborgish, albeit just as homely — over a soundscape as wavy as the computer-generated horizon on the cover art. “So you’re a shy guy,” she sings, inviting an unnamed recluse onto her sonic dancefloor. By the time they’re through, the duo have gotten their “shy guy” to release his inhibitions. It’s a cue we’re meant to take — “I know you feel that, too!”, a choir of youthful voices shouts in the refrain. You’re already nodding your head, so you might as well nod yes.
Cliche as it sounds, a major factor in making the record’s bubbly feel work was curiosity. “I like being in a position where I don’t know what I’m doing,” Stuart says. “Playing instruments I don’t feel as comfortable on, and just trying to get more in touch with the child side of it. Just curious about sound — like, What does this knob do?” Murphy adds: “It also feels very existential. Like, Where does this door open up to?”
For Brijean, traveling across the country in Angelo’s namesake opened an innumerable host of literal doors, but as far as this EP is concerned, the ones that stuck were more personal. In Murphy’s case, much of this effect was reached via small, otherwise-mundane moments shared with strangers on the road. “I love meeting people in little snippets throughout the world,” she says. “Especially pre-pandemic. To just pop into somebody’s place in a small town and connect in different ways. I love that aspect of it. Seeing how people live in different spaces, and seeing what the thread is of compassion and kindness in little snippets.”
One such snippet came together over a series of mid-travel “pit stops” the duo took in 2015, through which Murphy took polaroids of the people she met, digitizing copies for herself and gifting the originals to her newfound friends. She coupled this routine with an on-the-spot question: what song have you been listening to lately? “It’s a hard question to answer on the spot, but people did it,” Murphy says. “And the music, and the answers, and the exchanges, were just so sweet and full of radiant spectrum.”
Angelo has two things in common with the many people the duo met on tour: (1) it’s sweet and full of radiant spectrum, and (2) best encountered on the road.
