PREMIERE: The World All Around - Gone Be For Lovers

Will Shenton

It bums me out that we don't get a lot of vast, dramatic ballads these days. Maybe it's just the fault of my own little myopic bubble (every time I lament the loss of some genre, I get badgered with a dozen counterexamples until I concede on grounds of attrition), but it seems like the border between cerebral experimentation and guitar-solo catharsis is often a little too stark. That's why The World All Around's debut single, "Gone Be For Lovers," is so damn refreshing.

It opens on a quiet, crescendoing orchestral progression, overlaid with the shimmering sounds of hammered-on guitar strings, before abruptly resolving itself into a wash of synths and Arp's understated vocals. The first instrumental chorus introduces a soaring guitar arpeggio, which subsides back into the verse before it can completely resolve. But then, after another moment of relative stillness, "Gone Be For Lovers" explodes into one of the more brilliantly cathartic lead guitar licks I've heard in a long time.

The song is fairly short, coming in just under three minutes, but it doesn't feel like it needs to be any longer. It manages to distill the energy of more meandering tracks into a concentrate, using the well-trod structure so artfully that its resolution is absolutely satisfying. The group itself is a duo consisting of Hayden Arp (whose solo work we've written about before) and Griffin Jennings, both students at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. The World All Around is a new project of theirs, and with a debut this strong, we hope "Gone Be For Lovers" is the first of many things we'll hear from them.

REVIEW: Hayden Arp - For Gabriel EP

Laura Kerry

The last of the few albums that Hayden Arp has released is a live album from last December, Communion, which he "performed in the dark … in Fairchild Chapel." A 15-track record, it features early versions of the songs that comprise his new EP, and even as Arp has left that dimly-lit, spiritually-laden space for more traditional recording venues, much of the atmosphere of the original work remains.

Beautiful and elegiac, For Gabriel is the kind of music well suited to a stone chapel in small-town Ohio where light seeps in through stained glass windows. Like church music, it swings between moments of intimate whispers and grand swells of euphoria, each resonating at different but equally powerful frequencies. Building on a foundation of folk, Arp adds in different shades of chamber pop—two-plus-part harmonies, lush strings and other compositional textures—and electronic touches that create a rich, dimensional space in his music, as if each voice is still bouncing off of those tall stone walls.

Religious music is a fitting comparison beyond tone; while Gabriel functions primarily on the level of mood and atmosphere rather than narrative, each song seems to contain some nod to the theme of wrestling with spiritually. In the opener, “In the Fading Light,” the singer paints a scene with crunching sound effects and a quiet guitar line that explode into noise in the middle, singing, “In the fading light / We walk through heavy snow / And we are coming home … I think we’re lost now.”

The second song, “Curving World and Arcing Sky,” returns to the theme of loss and a distinct sense of setting with poetic lyrics such as, “When we left that day / I heard him say / To keep this place / Inside our bones / Yet I felt it fade.” In “There Are Voices,” Arp explores the intangible voices that he sees “in the windows” and feels “in the breeze,” couching a repetitive hymnal structure in a heavy, electronic-tinged Americana track. Finally, in the title track, the theme emerges more explicitly: “And all that I want to believe / Is that there is a home outside of these bones / For you and me,” he sings, returning to a whisper after an anguished verse.

In that line from “Gabriel,” and throughout the EP, Arp has a knack for making the very large and unknowable very small and concrete—forming tiny love stories of spiritual questions (a habit he shares with Sufjan Stevens, who he sometimes resembles in sound, too). Through complicated compositions, bursts of noise, and abstract stories, it’s a skill that keeps the whole album tight, personal, and away from the dangerous realm of platitudes. A gorgeous and original work, For Gabriel leaves you wondering when (and from what haunting spaces) Hayden Arp’s next music will arise.

PREMIERE: Hayden Arp - There Are Voices

Will Shenton

We seem to have reached a level of maturity in electronic composition where seemingly irreconcilable genres—jazz, folk, chamber pop, and countless others—are finally finding common ground with synthesizers and programmed beats. Perhaps it's due to the inherent experimentalism of electronic music, which has always been something of a scavenger by nature, or simply its relatively newfound acceptance as Serious Art. Either way, it's been a long time coming.

While many electronic artists are currently dabbling in genre-bending collaboration and appropriation, few are as immediately impressive as Hayden Arp. "There Are Voices," the second single from his upcoming EP, For Gabriel, is a wonderfully expansive track that seems to transcend its four-minute runtime. Stylistically, it borrows bits and pieces from Americana folk, mellow, beachy pop, and the crunchy, accordian-esque sounds of a mid-2000s indie dirge (think Margot & the Nuclear So and So's or The Decemberists), all while remaining beautifully cohesive.

Underpinning the song is a subtle layer of synth and electronic flourish, but it never crosses into the realm of obvious synth-pop. Arp's clean, rich, and frankly mesmerizing voice helps to ground the diverse instrumentation, giving the piece an organic feel that belies its distinctly modern roots. In short, "There Are Voices" is one we're going to be playing on repeat for a while—at least until we have the rest of the EP to contend with.

PREMIERE: Idol Hour - Windy Pines

Kelly Kirwan

Windy Pines has been playing loop since this morning, and I'm dizzy from the spiraling guitar riffs and distortion—the love-child of psychedelia and low-key grunge. The source? Idol Hour, a trio comprised of Stephen Becker, Nathan Swedlow, and Duncan Standish, whose game is centered around otherworldly chord progressions, funky dives, and vocals that shift from even-toned indifference to a soft, high-flying lilt. Their melodies are both plush and frenetic—you almost expect to hear the metallic snap of a guitar string from time to time—making the kind of rock that'll leave your hair slicked back with sweat from trying to keep up.

The track "Bit by Bit" starts off smoothly enough, trotting along with Becker’s muted voice, a casual foxtrot between guitar and percussion. But then, as you come to expect over the course of the album, it rises and falls into bass-driven interludes. Cymbals clash, drums carve out a steady beat, and the reverb starts to fray the song around the edges.

Then there’s "Drug Test," which has undertones of funk and guitar work that feels as if it could spin out at any moment—but Idol Hour knows how to teeter between delirium and dexterity. It’s lyric-less for the first two minutes, because the story’s in the beat, and it gradually picks up the pace with a feeling of looming panic that breaks into thrashing rock. “Why you gotta drug test me?” echoes momentarily in the distance, as if we're halfway through a thought lost to flight-or-fight reflexes. Maybe I’m a sucker for a wry, potentially autobiographical titles, but this one stuck with me. 

As for Windy Pines in general, it’s a slew of taught and speaker-thumping jams. Idol Hour is like a car revving its engine—they tease us a bit, but they never fail to follow through.

PREMIERE: shya - trying

It's always fun to come across great music from your alma mater, and since a good number of our staff went to Oberlin College, we're fortunate that it's a fairly regular occurrence. The newest campus-grown act to catch our eye is shya, a bedroom-pop project that's been tugging on our heartstrings pretty efficiently since the first listen.

shya's latest LP, trying, is a brilliantly put-together work of mellow rock that balances lo-fi sensibilities (note the refusal to capitalize anything) with tight songwriting and mixing that's far from your standard slacker fare. The influences are clear—'90s alternative, surf pop, etc.—but shya manages to rearrange them into something new and powerfully emotive.

The album's first single, "food poisoning," embodies all that makes this act stand out. You'll just have to wait to hear the rest when the album drops and be jealous of us in the meantime.