"Antique Pop" voted #20 on KKFIs top 111 albums of 2011!
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what people are saying:
“It's hard to imagine a record more ambitious and less pretentious than Victor & Penny's Antique Pop. The duet soon makes it clear that the joy these two experience playing together is as high as this performance aims, and the record hits the mark. McGrane's voice rings forth precise and beautiful...and this is a terrific guitar record from beginning to end. On “Rickshaw Chase”, (Freling’s) guitar battle (dance?) with Gonzalo Bergara is no less exciting and only slightly less ominous than their work together on the dazzling sabre dance of a face off on Django Reinhardt favorite, "Limehouse Blues."
And Antique Pop is not quite like anything else. The mix of Erin McGrane's crystalline, forthright vocal style and Jeff Freling's megaphone-like vocal distortions is every bit as punk rock in its way as the tension between the most rudimentary acoustic instruments pushing at guitar feedback that sometimes sounds on the verge of flash fire.
The American melting pot that refuses to become homogenous is, to my ears, the central theme of Victor & Penny's Antique Pop.” - Danny Alexander, "Take Em As They Come" Blog Read the entire review here
"As the allure of antiques lies in their rarity, so the allure of "Antique Pop" lies in the rare ground it covers. The string arrangements and the harmonic melding of McGrane's silky lyrics with Freling's old-timey, wah-wah voice are most superb and add extra layers to the pair's sound. Both of Freling's instruments - "Victor's Dream" and "Rickshaw Chase," which includes a collaboration with gypsy-jazz guitarist Gonzalo Bergara - contain solid guitar work...It's like an antique gem, this Antique Pop." - Berry Anderson, The PITCH Read the entire review here
“Aside from being lots of fun, which it is, this is a brilliant example of why minimalism works. Erin's vocal interpretations are engaging and perfect, and you'd swear that Jeff was channeling the deceptively smooth and fast style of Les Paul." - Dana Seeley
"The evening with Victor & Penny was an absolute rollicking blast. Erin McGrane's lissome voice and her droll vocal interplay with Jeff Freling, Erin's ukelele and Jeff's red-hot jazz guitar put the swing, the jump, the dance and the roll in their early 20th-century rock & roll. It's impossible to be down while listening to Victor & Penny.' - Scott Pfeiffer
"Victor & Penny were delightful and charming. The set is mostly 20's & 30's (with stops in the songbooks of Barclay Martin Ensemble & Tom Waits), so a newcomer might reasonably fear the potential for camp but none is offered. They mine that territory with a knowing respect, but I don't want to suggest it is overly reverential either - it's still a lot of fun. All of which is to say that we loved it." - Mike Webber
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