aron! – “Tandem Bike”

aron! already has a seat at our Dinner Party thanks to “table for two,” so technically he didn't need to bring anything. Showing up with a tandem bike feels ambitious, but we'll make room. “Tandem Bike” arrives alongside his debut album Too Close For Running, a collection aron! has built around love, risk and the occasionally terrifying business of going all in. The music itself seems considerably less worried about all of that. Jazz-tinted harmonies, old-school pop instincts and some deceptively sophisticated musicianship are tucked inside songs that would rather charm you than show you their homework.

There’s a lyric in this one I haven't been able to shake: “We can ride the bicycle til we run out of pavement.” It might be one of the nicer descriptions of falling for somebody I've heard lately. Nobody needs to know exactly where this is going. There doesn't even need to be a road the entire way. Just find somebody willing to keep pedaling when the pavement runs out and, ideally, contributing roughly 50 percent of the effort. Tandem bikes are romantic enough. We're not carrying dead weight uphill.

And that's aron!'s specialty. This is catchy, carefree pop music with enough musical intelligence underneath it to keep “carefree” from becoming disposable. Too Close For Running may be concerned with the risks of going all in, but “Tandem Bike” makes a persuasive case for getting on anyway.