Skip to the Good Part

Rachel Taylor’s radiant voice kicks off He Is We’s 2011 offering with a sunny mood. The bittersweet “All About Us” opens the duo’s Skip to the Good Part EP with a duet featuring a guest performance by Aaron Gillespie. “Our July in the Rain (Stripped)” downshifts into heartbroken balladry, where Taylor’s inflections resonate with an up-close intimacy. There’s a palpable pain in the textures of her voice that sounds like she’s been losing sleep over her muse; piano and string arrangements play behind her (check out the haunting piano-and-voice version toward the end). The title track is more optimistic, bouncing lightly on buoyant beats and sweeping cellos as Taylor takes a more soulful approach to her singing. She rocks some intricately phrased rhyming parts in the song’s break (which sounds slightly influenced by old-school hip-hop) before layering melodic rounds in the outro. The duo closes with a live rendition of “Prove You Wrong,” which somehow sounds better-recorded than the studio takes.