The Rogers Sisters

Sydney Morning Herald - Invisible Deck Review - 04/10/06

The Invisible Deck
The Rogers Sisters have moved away from their hot-footed party music.

The Invisible Deck: different, but still good.

When the Rogers Sisters came kicking and screaming out of Brooklyn – back when Williamsburg, the neighbourhood in which the siblings run a bar, was the world capital of pop-cultural cool – they were playing hysterical, hot-footed party music.

Delivering dancefloor-baiting twitchy-new-wave jams, their debut disc, 2002’s Purely Evil, was all hipster lyricism and extended B-52’s homage. Four years on, with the trio on their third record, things have changed.

Where a band called the Rogers Sisters would, presumably, be about the musical chops of the Rogers sisters (Jennifer and Laura, who were also in shouty post-rock combo Ruby Falls in the mid-’90s), the influence of their third wheel – bassist-vocalist Miyuki Furtado – is felt all over The Invisible Deck.

With Furtado mostly taking on chief vocal duties, and his low-slung basslines a rhythmic constant, the record works with a slow, steady throb; cuts such as Your Littlest World and Sooner or Later dabbling in a sort of stripped-down psychedelia. It’s not quite as good-times as the Rogers Sisters once were, but still good.

By Anthony Carew

The Sydney Morning Herald