New York City duo Tempers are all dark-but-bouncy electro pop–at least, that’s what we thought. Since forming in 2011, Jasmine Golestaneh and Eddie Cooper have been evolving their post-punk synth sound, pulling together singles and working on a debut album (which they promise will come out later this year). Their second single, “Strange Harvest,” comes out next week, but it’s what’s on the B-side that’s proof that, yes, there’s a heart beating inside.
Tempers’ acoustic version of the track is less eerie but just as unsettling (in a good way), with Golestaneh’s vocals front and center. “The title comes from a phrase in the lyrics: ‘My strange harvest / will taste sweet again.’ The song is about having compassion for the experience of depression, how it can skew your perception of reality into terrible contortions, but you can always draw hope from the transient nature of things–knowing that once clouds have passed and the darkness has shifted, things will be bright again,” she explains.
To turn the goth-gaze track into an acoustic version of itself, Cooper notes that they “experimented with stripping away a lot of those associations and expressing the song’s core through more basic elements.” And it just might be a sign of things to come; as he puts it, “Although Tempers has been so heavily electronic to this point, we both have deep connections to acoustic music, and we felt that kind of rendition shows another facet of the song’s character.”
Hear what he means right here–we’ve got the exclusive premiere before Pendu Sound Recordings releases the single on April 24. Like what you hear? They’re playing tomorrow night in Brooklyn (details here)! –REBECCA WILLA DAVIS
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