Song of the Week: "Dragonflies" by Povi (1999)

This week’s song of the week is the criminally underplayed Dragonflies by Povi.

It wouldn’t be technically correct to refer to Povi as a “group” or “band” — the term “long-distance collaboration” might be more apt. Povi is really two people: Los Angeles-based music producer/technical wizard Carmen Rizzo taking care of all the electronic instruments and Cristina Calero handling guitar, bass and vocals from a studio in Australia.

Povi put out only one album, but it’s a charming one: Life in Volcanoes, which hit the streets in 1999. The album navigates that territory between trip-hoppy chill out a la Morcheeba and catchy female-led alt-rock in the vein of Garbage. It’s definitely a product of its time: the sounds and production of the album evoke a time when one Fatboy Slim was eating up the charts and the songs would fit nicely in a Napster “makeout playlist” between Esthero’s Heaven Sent and Radiohead’s Paranoid Android.

(Now that I am a married man, I can neither confirm nor deny that I was ever in possession of said makeout playlists and will only state that I am speaking hypothetically. I can only say that I can imagine that you single kids might enjoy making the “hot sweaty pancakes” with those songs in the background.)

Dragonflies is the catchiest tune on the album, and as Christopher Thelen wrote in Daily Vault Album Reviews, “if there’s any justice in this industry, should be burning up the alternative charts in no time flat”. Alas, justice didn’t prevail, but that’s no reason that you shouldn’t enjoy this tune.

This song of the week has now expired, but you can always download it (and two other songs off the album) from the Epitonic website.