In the time-honored tradition of Blondie, Bettie Serveert, Molly Hatchet, et al, take note: Agnes Kain is a band, specifically, duo Chanelle Afford and Stefan Simunic. Having grown up on the same street in a small town on the outskirts of Sydney, Australia, Afford and Simunic play together with the kind of ease that befits old friends, creating music that is loose and intuitive, heartfelt without being soppy or sentimental. There is a folksiness to Agnes Kain's sound, owing to the preponderance of unplugged instruments - acoustic guitar, piano, mandolin, and glockenspiel feature in most tracks here - but also because of the band's lo-fi aesthetic. Like many artists nowadays, Agnes Kain recorded Keep Walking Or I'll Kill You at home, but instead of trying to make an album that sounds as if it was constructed under controlled studio conditions, with walls of seamless guitars and layered vocals, Keep Walking is what it is: a collection of pretty songs recorded on the fly, between thunderstorms, the roar of airplanes, and a housemate who vacuums incessantly.
--Larry O. Dean
