Renaissance team

>> Draft-dodging, accident-prone, smooth-talking romantics Damon & Naomi

by BOSS SAMBOSA

Wife-and-husband team Naomi Yang and Damon Krukowski are a dreamy, Boston-based folk duo based in lush sonic washes, happy accidents and really sweet, eerie vocals. Their latest album, a collaboration with the Japanese psychedelic band Ghost, has a weird, cluttered beauty to it, and a romantic edge that never turns sappy. Neither does the wholeness of their speech, never competitive, smoothly completing each other's thoughts.



Mirror: So what was it like to work with Ghost? Are they as instinctual as you?

Damon Krukowski: No. They were very deliberate.

Naomi Yang: They like to do things over and over again.

DK: For example, Kurihawa came in to do the guitar solo on "The Great Wall," did it beautifully--

NY: Yeah, it was perfect. And he just turned to us and said, "Erase!"

DK: We've always tended to rely heavily on our first takes. We learned this from our old producer, Kramer. Out of necessity because--

NY: He had a short attention span, he--

DK: Made us keep things that we thought were mistakes, and they turned out to be--

NY: Pretty interesting.

M: And Ghost?

DK: Ghost work totally differently. They do a take, they listen back to it, and they discuss it. And they argue--

NY: For a long time--

DK: In Japanese--

NY: With a lot of meaningful silences.

DK: So after every take it was like a Kurosawa movie.

M: You've been des-cribed as a Renaissance couple, and this album has a certain courtly feel to it. Ever wish you were born somewhere or sometime else?

NY: I'm very much rooted in the present. But we love music from the late '60s and early '70s.

DK: I wouldn't have wanted to be drafted.

NY: Then you'd move to Canada!

With Frankie Sparo at Casa del Popolo on Monday, March 26, 9pm, $10