New Music/Video: Big Deal – ‘Chair’

Of all the promising “Big” bands going around these days — Big Troubles, Big Moves — Big Deal are the simplest. “Chair,” like all their songs, is just voices and guitars; that’s all it needs. The chord palimpsest of the band’s electric and acoustic strumming is big and bold enough to account for the missing rhythm section, but it’s the vocals that kill you. “Only want me for my lungs / only want me for the songs I write about you,” Kacey Underwood and Alice Costelloe sing in careful harmony. “Because I like you.” No frills and no melodrama here, just feelings striving to be understood. The band’s debut, Lights Out, is full of music like this, songs about young love that don’t try too hard or feign not trying at all, songs that just work. Not the world’s biggest deal, maybe, but surely a good one.

Big Deal – Chair by Big Deal

(Lights Out is due Jan. 24, 2012, on Mute)