Thank you, Noise for Pretend, you came by just in time. After another boring day spent rifling through corporate America's filing cabinets for wages, I emerged into 28-degree half light, shivered my way to my ice-encrusted automobile, and headed home exhausted. When I got there, Noise for Pretend were waiting for me. They stuck a martini in my hand, tossed a lei around my neck, and gave me a much-needed break from the cold and conformity that's surrounded my life for the past couple of weeks.

From the moment it touches down-- the streamlined pop noir of "The Song Formerly Known as Whatever We Used to Call It"-- Noise for Pretend's grammatically challenged debut album is as refreshing as limon Jarritos over ice. Sonically, it's about the equivalent of a spy film set in Trinidad, falling between Cancer and Capricorn, but with a healthy, tempering dose of style and cool.

The trio has many weapons, but their most devastating is lead vocalist Esperanza Spalding, who also does time in Hush label head Chad Crouch's Blanket Music project, and plucks a mean double bass. She often sings with a trip-hop detachment that belies the richness of her voice, but either way you slice it, she's got quite a set of pipes (and reportedly, she's only 17). Nearly as essential to the band's sound: Ben Workman's guitar work, which is uniformly exquisite. His electric drips with reverb, recalling the off-handed freedom of The Verve's Nick McCabe, while his acoustic playing is full of Spanish flourishes and precise strumming.

Not to be forgotten is drummer Christian Cochran, whose playing rarely resorts to beats taken from books, and often has a seductive sway to it, such as on the undulating "Pants with His Halfway Down", a Latin slink Mancini would probably find to his liking. He deconstructs the beat on "Most Red Wagons Aren't Very Long" to the point of negation, but it never bogs the song down. In general, the band coalesces incredibly for one so young, and recently formed.

Rarely is this better evidenced than on the swaying Latin spy waltz "Due to Lamplooking". Spalding's bass lies down a jazzy ostinato the other members immediately latch onto, but it's the seamless transition into a funky bridge and back again that's most impressive; Noise for Pretend fashion 3½ minutes into something of a miniature epic. They follow it with "Go Figure, Another Warm Day in Paradise" (hands down my favorite song title of the year), which rides a simple beat straight at you, with some subtle, catchy guitar work from Workman.

All told, Happy You Near is an estimable debut that should put Noise for Pretend on the map-- probably just east of Cuba. At the very least, it's a great big warm spot in my temporarily cold world; I'll be thinking of them while I trim the goatee of icicles from my Toyota's front license plate before work tomorrow.

-Joe Tangari, December 11th, 2002