The all-girl trio that make up Au Revoir Simone - Erika Forster, Annie Hart, and Heather D'Angelo - may remind you of HAIM, except for the fact that their music is more keyboard-based, the trio don't dance as much, and the mood they evoke is unmistakably dreamy and pensive. Pitchfork's Brian Howe notes that their music "always felt like nocturnal illumination", and points out the ethereal, delicate nature of the sound that they've developed over the years:
"Their patterned musical figures and calmly rendered vocal lines create a sense of pleasant remove from their subject matter, which is usually devotion. Smoothing down charged emotions with something between plucky self-control and spooky disassociation, Erika Forster, Annie Hart, and Heather D'Angelo can seem all the more ghostly for how they blend together on record, which gives their most private and personal sentiments an airy, collective tinge of the afterlife."
"Somebody Who", a single of their 2013 album Move in Spectrums, stays true to their formula of dreamy electro-pop, with its sweet melodies and vaguely haunting harmonies - although the sonic calmness does get discretely disrupted when the occassional riff interrupts the soft padded drums and smooth synths. The trio seem to be in a sort of pleasant emotional limbo, where there is dissatisfaction with a lover and a desire for 'somebody who/ can stay awake':
'Can't stay awake, I wonder how long I can fake it.Outside I wait, I feel my body hesitating.Can't find a little more time, this world knows how to take it.Don't even know but I need somebody else to break this.'
The track seems to flit between sleep and wakefulness, while the pulsing synths and drum beats hint at a progressive momentum that points towards a forward-looking inner desire for someone who can disrupt the calm, not-altogether-displeasing stasis. The accompanying music video fits the song's mood quite well, as the camera pans through a large, empty mansion that Erika, Annie and Heather stand around in as they sing and work their keyboard magic.
