Slow Club at Empty Bottle | Concert preview

“Cute” and “compelling” are rarely compatible companions. Typically, no amount of charm can bridge the chasm between the two. Slow Club often teetered on succumbing to its own tweeness on its first album, 2009’s Yeah So, erring too far on the side of earnest to surmount the inherently destructive distraction of, for example, whimsical found-object percussion. The duo delivered its romantic yearnings with such good vibes that much of the drama was instantly defused.

Charles Watson and Rebecca Taylor seem to have learned their lesson. Their second album, last year’s Paradise, shows marked improvement. The Sheffield, England, act plays up the atmosphere, and shifts away from unified harmonies to tense—and more grown-up—vocal back-and-forths. An air of cuteness still hangs over the folk-pop pair, but at least a window to darker vistas has been opened. There’s an invigorating sense of something at stake to the disc’s girl-group dynamics and outbursts of guitar, one that could ingratiate the group to the same grassroots crowd that’s made Florence Welch a superstar.