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Graffiti Online (West Virginia), August, 2004 Timewellspent Timewellspent (Parasol). Despite its semi-return to hipness during the lounge boom of the detestably ironic ’90s, the orchestral pop of The Left Banke, Bacharach and Odyssey and Oracle is still seldom heard and less often done well. That makes the debut of this south Florida duo worth picking up on general principles, and a delight once you hear how cannily Casey Fundaro (the nephew of Three Dog Night’s Danny Hutton) and multi-instrumentalist Christopher Moll channel their obvious influences. "Hello" kicks things off with gentle stabs of Fender Rhodes and breezy harmonies, and from there Fundaro and Moll glide effortlessly through a program of lovely tunes whose sun-kissed sheen masks their underlying melancholy (the one exception, the harder-rocking "sitting by the window," is a Britpop-style gem). Youthful missteps - the mawkish love song "Millionaire" certainly qualifies - are far outweighed by the reverence for, and skill in recreating, these lovely sounds of yesteryear. (www.parasol.com) DLR.
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