Bittersweet: bit • ter • sweet: [adj. Bit-er-sweet; n. bit-er-sweet]
1. Both pleasant and painful or regretful. (Adjective)
2. Pleasure mingled with pain or regret. (Noun)
If ever there were a more aptly named musical entity than the electronic/jazz/trip-hop duo Bitter:sweet from Los Angeles - I have yet to come across it. What else would you name something that makes beautiful music tinged with a slow seductive shade of melancholy?
Comprised of Shana Halligan (vocals and song composition) and Kiran Shahani (production and song composition), Bitter:sweet sound like something born of a melting pot filled to the brim with portions of Portishead, Bjork, Zero 7, Everything But The Girl, and Serge Gainsbourg. Or, to put it in simpler terms, Bitter:sweet sounds like an duo inspired by listening to angels doing endless hours of backing harmonies for Nina Simone or Ella Fitzgerald.
Honestly; sitting here typing this while listening to their debut album The Mating Game, I cannot help but get delicious goose-bumps on my ear drums. It’s beautiful.
What also comes to my mind is just how precocious fate is and how, but for an anonymous online response to a posting by Shahani, these two people might never have found in each other such a perfect musical fit, despite the fact that they lived quire near each other.
I shudder to think - or maybe it’s just a reaction to the current song playing? Either way.
Halligan and Shahani lived only a block away from each other, and recorded just one wall away from each other in the same building, but their lives had never crossed in such a way that they found themselves meeting. Until, that is, the posting by Shahani.
Halligan had just returned home from “having a beautiful experience” in Europe when she decided to answer her first-ever ad for a singer. She’d grown up with music in her blood — her father is eight-time Grammy Award winning composer Dick Halligan of Blood, Sweat and Tears — and had started her singing career at age seven by performing in films and television commercials.
Article comments
1 - Connie Phillips
Congrats! This article has been forwarded to the Advance.net websites.
2 - Ben Miraski
So, here I am, 8 months after this was published... Why am I just discovering this awesome loungey, Bond-esque album now?
Thank Indiefeed podcasts for throwing the Mating Game remix on their daily song fest.
This album is amazing. I hesitate to say a great soundtrack for a party, or a little private after party. Amazing breathy vocals, awesome orchestration. Get this. Now!