Deep Time at the Burlington | Concert preview

Deep Time

Photo: Angel Ceballos

The rock & roll duo is no longer a novelty, which could be attributed to a couple of things, a struggling economy being one, the reduced potential for band in-fighting another. The downside is that it’s often limiting, unless you enlist a laptop as your third member. But Austin two-piece Deep Time hardly needs any embellishment. Jennifer Moore and Adam Jones are already adept at avoiding garage-pop pitfalls, instead honing a unique take on punk-rock minimalism that prizes melody and spiky arrangements above all else.

That has a lot to do with Moore, whose playful delivery is flexible and captivating on the nine tunes making up Deep Time’s self-titled debut for Sub Pop sister label Hardly Art. Firm but gentle, her voice glides over spare guitar jangle and organ buzz, bundled with Jones’s tidy postpunk backbeats and air-tight snare accented by the occasional cowbell and woodblock. Tick-tock glockenspiel provides a dainty counterpoint to Moore’s falsetto hopscotch on “Sgt. Sierra,” while the single “Clouds” would be the perfect soundtrack for a heist with low-budget stakes, leaving our sense of suspense to idle like a getaway car on its last legs.

An endorsement in the form of a bio from onetime indie style arbiter Ian Svenonius is the latest boon to the Texan twosome, formerly known as Yellow Fever, which makes perfect sense. Deep Time’s modest yet infectious strain of stripped-down cool would’ve fit effortlessly on a bill with any of Svenonius’s outfits during his ’90s heyday.