doubleVee
Periscope at Midnight
In raising the utterly charming and wildly entertaining Periscope at Midnight, Allan and Barb Vest — the husband-and-wife duo known as doubleVee — check to see if the coast is clear to come out and play, eager to resume their whimsically subversive indie-pop activities in a sandbox of classic pop sensibilities and skewed surrealism. While pointing the way forward, they also dredge up Allan’s past as the main creative force behind the brilliant Starlight Mints, artfully giving context to doubleVee’s current state of affairs.
Their sonic submersible painted cartoonishly gothic, but with a peppermint ‘60s pop swirl, eschewing a Beatlesque yellow, doubleVee’s been submerged since the 2022 album Treat Her Strangely, but they’re breaching the surface with a fun patchwork EP that revisits two Mints’ favorites and adds four new tracks to the canon. Tinkering with “Submarine Number Three Vee” and “Maybe Tonight (What’s Inside of Me),” the former a sweeping, orchestral-pop tour de force and the latter a dizzying, piano-pounding chase over zigzagging, M.C. Escher-drawn staircases, doubleVee sharpens and vividly reinvigorates both exquisitely crafted, infectious Mints’ originals, cleaning out some of the junk and injecting more color into the two remakes, all of Periscope at Midnight brushed and shaded by Barb’s stenciled vocals and synth cosmetics.
Everything old is new again for doubleVee, which is true of what remains of Periscope at Midnight, with the hyperkinetic, slightly fuzzy, and upbeat “Diamond Thumb” so deliriously catchy and psychedelically sunny it’s like being welcomed at a tropical island resort by The B-52s and The Apples in Stereo. And then there’s “Everyone’s Lonely Under the Sea,” its chaotic, buzzy ecstasy fueled by big beats, scratchy distortion, and bouncy bass, giving off beach-y radiation vibes.
Different in every possible way, drifting through a tunnel of love, “Natural Selection” is cooled by a breezy bossa nova sway, some flamenco guitar flourishes, and trumpet brass. The crispy, herky-jerky “Modern Times” snaps doubleVee back to reality, stabbing insistently to grab your attention but also traversing dreamy, fanciful bridges to nowhere. Short, but melodically sweet and packed with bewitching embellishments, like handclaps and theremin and vibraphone sounds to go along with fizzy, stinging guitars, Periscope at Midnight has its third eye on everything.
