Mates of State

Though conceived as a duo, Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel — the he and she music factory known as Mates of State — have never failed to generate a trademark wall of sound built on dozens of varied voicings of keys, drums, and alternately lushly layered and playfully dueling vocals. On their newest album, re-arrange us, they move beyond these boundaries (their traditional organ sound is a distant memory, replaced with organic piano and synth sounds) with additional instrumentation, not to mention a quantum leap in song craft apparent on instantly indelible gems like now, jigsaw and get better. Throughout the new album, Kori's piano and the emergence of both Mates' lead vocals from their trademark harmonizing signal the next stage of Mates of State's evolution.