Robbie Robertson coined a phrase in an interview once, and it stuck with me. He said that even though he’d written many types of songs, the ones that always got to him and stayed with him were, if I recall correctly, “skin creepers.”

A skin creeper is a song that may or may not have a hard-core hook yet gets inside your head and stays there; it captures a mood that infects the listener on a personal level. Mystery, emotion, and a definite sense of being “haunted” all typify the skin-creeper ethic. It dawned on me that few songs of this nature actually become hits, because at first blush they can make you feel a little uncomfortable, which was the first thing I felt a few years ago when listening to the songs on Carptree’s Man Made Machine (2005), their third release but the first with U.S. distribution.

The Swedish duo of Niclas Flinck (vocals) and Carl Westholm (keyboards) mine many different aspects of music: a progressive edge, a gothic touch, a metal bite, and a pop sensibility. Music critics love to throw around the word “texture,” usually as a description of a performance that deviates from standard chords and phrasing. That may be true of Carptree as well, but Flinck’s vocals, whispered and sometimes slightly hissed, and Westholm’s insistence on embracing synthetic sounds in the forefront rather than burying them behind traditional ones (besides the piano, which often does take precedence) attempt something a little more “felt” and a little less “heard.” Essentially, Man Made Machine has great, eerie skin-creeping moments in spades. (more…)