Any band with a name that looks like somebody’s email password instantly arouses my suspicions — probably because clunky alphanumerical strings seemingly composed of someones ‘porn’ name and the year they were born were irritatingly prevalent among pop and dance bands of the early 90s. The number 2 was a repeat offender. In 1993 a euro trash rave band called 2 Unlimited held up the airwaves with the hit “No Limits.” Then there were Boys II Men. There was 2Pac.
Perhaps it’s just me, but 2 Foot Yard also has the whiff of a working title, like a loose confederation of Dutch DJs who got together for a couple of albums. But while they may be an ‘outfit’ of sorts, a vehicle for the talents of Marika Hughes (Charming Hostess, Vienna Teng), Shahzad Ismaily (too many to mention) and Carla Kihlstedt, they are no stuffed shirt. To name but a few of Ms. Kihlstedt’s projects: Sleepytime Gorilla Museum (Mr. Bungle with violins), The Book of Knots (responsible for a compilation of scary portraits of rotten industrial towns), and a song cycle for the stage based around Jorge Luis Borges’ Book of Imaginary Beings. The last is particularly impressive when you consider the influence of another famous musical menagerie: Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals - which, while being the source of as many radio friendly soundbites as any pop album, is experimental, cacophonous in parts.
If I may extend the analogy to 2 Foot Yard themselves, the eponymous “Borrowed Arms” is the radio friendly equivalent of the Carnival’s ‘swan’ (song), a perfect gem of chamber pop that would be unpleasant only to someone in a really bad mood. On the other hand the album throws up tracks like “Crisis”, which is shouty and abrasive. Overall though, Borrowed Arms and 2 Foot Yard are an experiment within the parameters of pop. Carla Kihlstedt implied as much in an interview after a gig in Amsterdam (the home of techno I might add). The band’s tiny 2 Foot Yard was that limited space in which the artists were hanging their work, leaning their stepladders, paint cans and so on. Although the sound was lush, the band members were few, and the arrangements were for songs of pop length, which could be reproduced easily on stage without the whole of Polyphonic Spree in tow.
The series of live videos with interviews are perhaps a more accurate glimpse of what the band can do than the album itself. But this is not to say Borrowed Arms isn’t great, it’s just so clearly created on the white paper that neutral ‘space’ estate agents and gallery attendants are so fond of pointing their clipboards at. It’s as if the record can never be more than a brochure for the live performance. Perhaps chamber pop is faulty anyway in it’s attempt marry the incompatible — a bold sketch of a pop song and something consummately ‘finished’. Is it a fundamentally pointless exercise? Or is the genre like classical music — put down on record for convenience, while it’s taken for granted that most music buffs would rather go to their church, the concert hall.
Despite all that’s been said though, 2 Foot Yard do transmit a rough and readiness, and even a kind of wartime bawdiness (see the provocative “Red-rag & Pink-flag”, based on E. E. Cummings’ poem) which appears to be born out of a life lived permanently on the road. Carla Kihlstedt is described on her myspace as “a wayward waif wandering the wide world, happily lost somewhere between the music conservatory, the arboretum, and the road house.” This excursion into fancy has the potential to be irritating, but it’s self deprecating enough to be endearing. In the Dutch interview, Carla seemed rueful about her tendency to end up with a band flanking her. I imagine her idea of normality must be pretty strange, but her talk of popping up in various projects as if she were a circus brat continually — but unsuccessfully trying to strike out on her own — seemed to make deliberate light of her prolific achievements. Anyway, what came across clearly was that the work of creating and recording music was more important to the members of 2 Foot Yard than where it originated.
Indeed there’s a touch of old fashioned socialism about the band, exemplified in the way they come on stage wearing workaday gear. Musicians, after all, must sweat a lot under those lights. 2 Foot Yard are old hands, ‘comrades’ skillful enough to make the best of any limitations imposed on them, even by themselves. They have the reliability of classically trained musicians and the rakishness of rock entertainers. Their accomplished album may not represent the full warmth of their live sound, but its influences (Klezmer and European Jazz) and its concerns (the restless heart, the cabaret bar, the sadness of settled life) record their trek through music, glamorous or world weary, and sometimes a bit of both. From: https://www.tinymixtapes.com/delorean/2-foot-yard-borrowed-arms
