Such description of the Sadnecessary‘s creamy middling may make it sound boring or at the very least unremarkable, but in truth, it’s one of the more inscrutable albums you’ll listen to this year. Dynamics are kept similarly in check, with few moments on the album raising to a scream or lowering to a whisper, instead keeping an even keel. The most energetic tracks - opener “Stunner” and second single “Down By the River” - never accelerate past a trot, and the draggiest tracks - the rhythm-section-less closer “Loveland,” and the love song “Fairytale” - never slow to more than a saunter. Chance opts for neither, instead finding themselves contented at a casual stroll. When you think of folk in 2014, you tend to think of it in polarized extremes: the rushing banjos, furious drums, and stadium-ready choruses of Mumford & Sons, or the balladic, cabin-in-the-woods minimalism of Bon Iver. The appeal of Milky Chance has a lot to do with moderation. Unlike many fluke successes of its ilk, “Dance” is no red herring - the great majority of Sadnecessary follows in its pattern of low-octane beats and gently lapping guitar strumming, making for a lovely and understated album that feels ideal to warm up to as the weather gets progressively more compromised outside your window. The group’s serenely rollicking crossover jam is currently enjoying a multi-week run on top of Billboard’s Rock Airplay chart, and is gradually climbing up the Hot 100 as well. Milky Chance’s unusal brand of mid-tempo acoustic rock has been purposefully imported over the Atlantic thanks to the surprise success of their debut single, “Stolen Dance,” one of the least-likely U.S. But here they are, and we should be grateful for that, because they’re bringing with them Sadnecessary, the best autumn soundtrack this side of Manitoba. is not a long one, and when you add the fact that Chance are not a pair of folkies in the conventional, co-piloting vocals sense of Simon & Garfunkel, but more in the He’s the DJ, I’m the Singer sense of Mackelmore & Ryan Lewis, it becomes even more improbable.
The list of Central European coffee-house acts to break it big in the U.S. The debut album from German folk-pop duo Milky Chance took over a year to make it from their home country to American shores, but really, it’s pretty tremendous it made it here at all.