The new live album from psychedelic folk duo Damon and Naomi recalls a bygone era. One can almost imagine them sharing a double bill with the Baez sisters in a smoky Greenwich Village coffee house: he hunched over his guitar, she dwarfed by her bass, her dark hair and white complexion looking naturally mod. In an era when irony rules, their music is poetic without pretense, arty without artifice. It is also, outside of indie music circles, almost unknown.
"We aren't surprised," says Naomi Yang. After all, the first band she and Damon Krukowski played in, Galaxie 500, now credited with influencing every shoegazer group around, was barely acknowledged in its heyday in the late '80s. "I think 15 people came to our last show."
In an early-morning interview in preparation for the duo's upcoming tour of Japan, Yang and Krukowski demonstrate a conversational telepathy usually found in either long-standing artistic collaborations or marriages.