Taxi Taxi! “Old Big Trees”
On Still Standing At Your Back Door, the debut full-length from nineteen-year-old Swedish twins Taxi Taxi!, sisters Miriam and Johanna Berhan go far out of their way to present themselves as old souls.
Yeah, their songwriting relies heavily on teenybopper-isms like puppy love and first heartaches, and you won’t ever mistake their squeaky harmonies as originating from some older and wiser female duo, but that’s the extent of any connection that could be made to America’s same-aged, Disney-backed tween-pop brigade. Instead of cheapened R&B-lite or pop-rock aural assaults, the Berhan sibs would rather surround their voices in beautifully earthen, acousti-folk settings. Their “girl-loves-boy” narratives? Over-dramatized poetics (most penned around the age of fifteen) about romantic addictions to boys with “troubled souls” (“Ripest Fruit”) and how snuggling close with the one you love brings about fantasies of marriage and kids (“More Childish Than In A Long Time”).
This strain for a beyond-our-years maturity in both musical and lyrical forms helps establish Still Standing as an ideal winter-time listen for listeners of all different ages, but interestingly enough, it’s true standout moment arises when Taxi Taxi! act more their age, as they do on the merry “Old Big Trees”, a summer camp sing-along-structured ditty featuring tender oom-pah strummings and the girls’ cutesy doe-eyed-meets-goth attempt at convincing some boy of the great couple they could make.
“Bachelor, oh bachelor,” they coo in girlish unison, “Maybe my skeleton would look quite beautiful beside yours”. All together now: Awww…
DL: “Old Big Trees” (alt)
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