Matt & Kim’s song in the key of their life

October 27, 11:08 AMMusic ExaminerLinda Laban

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Kim & Matt. Photo credit: Nicholas Chatfield-Taylor

As with pretty much all of our cities, Brooklyn needs more buildings, doesn’t it. That’s a completely rhetorical, if not utterly sarcastic statement.  Matt Johnson, singer, guitarist, and keyboard player for Brooklyn-based indie pop duo Matt & Kim, is talking about the destruction of his neighborhood by incessant soldier ant-like developers.

“It’s not like they are renovating the buildings. They are replacing them. We came back from tour and didn’t even recognize which street we were on. The whole history is dwindling.” That’s hip and trendy, and soon-to-be bland, Brooklyn for you. Johnson, a 26-year-old Vermont native, met 29-year-old Kim Schifino, who hails from Providence, RI, six years ago at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute.  Not only do they play as Matt & Kim, but they also live together in a cramped railroad style apartment, where you walk through each room to get to the next one. “I can touch the walls with my feet when I stretch out,” says Johnson. “It’s like what a hallway would have been in Vermont.”

Such cramped, hustling New York city life formed the inspiration for Matt & Kim’s fun video for the effervescent new single “Daylight,” which is released by singles label, Green Label Sound, and previews the duo’s forthcoming second album, “Grand,” which is slated to come out Jan 20, 2009.

The video starts with Matt & Kim in bed. Naturally, as with all musical couples, he’s tapping away on a keyboard and singing. Kim is smiling sweetly beside him. Next the pair is in the shower, Matt again on his keyboard, and Kim banging away on her drum kit. From there the pair is shot performing in a cab, a tiny alleyway, a refrigerator, and a dumpster. Such is a day in the busy life of an indie pop buzz band: Playing in a dumpster. No doubt a metaphor for all the dumps and dives bands play, buzz or not.

All through the video, though, stoic Kim smiles madly. But, as Matt explains, she wasn’t completely happy with the dumpster scene.

“They told us they would get a clean dumpster. But by clean, there was still like this thick substance on the bottom that we didn’t even know what it was. Kim has this kinda heightened gag reflex. It was one of those situations that I thought, we’re just going to push through. Even if Kim’s going to vomit on me.”