For me, husband/wife musical collaborations pretty much consist on the extreme scale of either turning out to be a very good idea or very, very bad idea. Working so closely with your significant other carries the risk of excessive sentimentality or the irritating bland sound of too much togetherness. That being said, such collaborations can also be great when the musicians in question are completely in sync with one another. Luckily for Exitmusic, this duo resides in the latter category. This particular pair, consisting of New York-based couple Aleksa Palladino and Devon Church, creates an electric and otherworldly sound that serves as effective proof for why two can often be better than one.
How to best describe Passage? The first word that comes to mind is vulnerable. Honest. Raw. Release. Oh, right — a passage. Theirs is the kind of music that you cannot hide from. Even if blurry guitar melodies and percussive explosions isn’t typically your style, Exitmusic has this brilliant ability to nevertheless completely draw you in. To be sure, it’s a sound that intentionally inspires feeling. Perhaps that’s the beauty of it — feelings are messy, and this is a trait reflected in the music. Exitmusic is another one of those great reminders that just because something isn’t perfectly clean around the edges doesn’t mean it shouldn’t exist.
It is hard not to see the album in a cinematic way. Passage is drinking too much bourbon and crawling through the city in the wee hours of the morning. It’s the fluorescent lights of the subway. It’s giving in to the moment in front of you. It’s desperation. It is miserable freedom. It’s every cliché imaginable in an ingenious non-clichéd package. It’s a lot of things, but all of these are pretty much just fanciful ways of saying the album, with all of its genre fluidity and fearless risk taking, is really kind of imperfect perfection.