There are a couple of serendipitous events connected to our bumping into the captivating music of Bitter:Sweet, this L.A. dance pop duo on the sharp rise. About a year ago, we were waiting on a review (that never came) from a now-former reviewer on a band called The Bittersweets. One of our designers, Max, wanted to fashion a page for the review in advance, and slightly mis-remembered the name, so that a search for Bittersweet brought up only this L.A. act, with a colon in the middle, so to speak.
By the time he realized that he'd made a page for the wrong band and that we were going to abort the review mission on the original act, he'd grown attached to Bitter:Sweet's sound. He decided to go ahead and write a review more about the episode, so that the page wouldn't go to waste, perhaps, and so their fab clips could be heard.
I'd completely forgotten about all this almost a year later when I bumped into Bitter:Sweet on myspace. I think it was a featured song on somebody's page, which I'll frequently sample if the person has caught my fleeting attention. It was the title song of The Mating Game, and it was one of those slo-mo Whoa, hang on just a minute now moments.
So later, when I told Max that I was going to cover this great duo I'd found, he sent me a link to the review page and said that apparently I'd forgotten our previous acquaintance with the band, or at least his acquaintance...
And I hope and I imagine that a multitude of people is similarly catching on to this incredible sound, because it's not only a myspace phenomenon, but it's all over the TV, and companies like LaCoste have picked up on the utter infectivity of the groove. Bitter:Sweet is the musical genius of Kiran Shahani, formerly of Supreme Beings Of Leisure, and the irresistible Shana Halligan, composer and vocalist. We had a conversation with both of them recently on separate lines, and enjoyed the interplay greatly. All you got to do after the interview is check out the clips on the Listen page, and nobody's gonna have to tell you to buy them, it's just gonna happen.
