Beside You. Papas Fritas. 2000. Minty Fresh.

Alongside the understated pop pleasures of this pre-9/11 track from the third Papas Fritas record, Buildings and Grounds, runs a current of genuine excitement as drummer and vocalist Shivika Asthana gropes her way towards the voice of feminine maturity and power. Emptying her studio performance of any trace of humor or sympathy, Asthana connects so directly with her record audience that though the strength of her delivery registers delicately—just above a whisper—it’s enough to carry in its young timbre the slightest wisp of resentment and menace. The sustained eroticism of her performance is trancelike, challenging you to break its spell. Beside You’s musical accompaniment is a quietly dramatic, rhythmic commentary on the lyric’s theme of a young couple broken in half by the inability to communicate beyond the folly of mixed signals. Its tempo is the quickened pulse, the anxious bewilderment of inexperience and the obdurate self-confinement in one own’s head for so long a period of time that a remedy for acrimonious miscommunication as radically simplistic as looking into his eyes and saying the words, “This is what’s wrong,” is virtually inconceivable. By the time of the song’s coda, a fade out comprised of aptly sequenced, backing vocal “aahs,” its place as worthy successor to the rich but minority lineage of American pop drama made perfect in 1979 by Fleetwood Mac’s double album opus Tusk is auspiciously obvious.

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