Review

PREMIERE: The Washboard Abs - Lowlight Visions

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Phillipe Roberts

Recorded during islands of relative calm as songwriter Clarke Sondermann cared for a partner in the wake of a stage IV cancer diagnosis, Lowlight Visions was never intended to be a document of grief or mourning. The thirteen-track collection became a kind of life raft, a way to float above the immense pain and preserve the deep love felt for his ailing partner. “The songs come from the intersection of tremendous love and tremendous fear,” he says, “and though the fear is very present, communicating the love was my intention.” The Washboard Abs set that tremendous love adrift in arrangements that, while never quite detaching themselves from a formula of twinkling, finger-picked guitars entangling gently over breakbeat drums, promote a quietly propulsive healing. Sondermann and co. process the uncertainty of illness by putting order to chaos—a form of ultra-harmonious musical housekeeping.

If there’s any criticism to be made of this particular coping mechanism on Lowlight Visions, it’s that Sondermann’s vision is perhaps too well realized to reveal any of the negative emotions bubbling beneath the surface without seriously digging into the lyrics. Put this album on in the background, allow the placid surroundings and ambient textures to swirl around you, and you’ll come away with a strong feeling of romantic nostalgia rather than a broken heart. However, this may be exactly what The Washboard Abs intended to create: an escapist fantasy from the very real pain that creates lyrics like “Can I play dumb / Or try forgetting / The fear of ending?” Though you may have to detach yourself from the beautiful surface to hear it, those moments of sheer emotional terror are well worth listening for.

But if one is to take the purely escapist route, The Washboard Abs’ cinematic, sentimental vision is more than enough to sweep you away. They’re masterful at creating cross-hatched guitar arpeggios peppered with melodic fragments and layering percussion around them in a race to fill the gaps. Certain tracks, like latecomer “Brittle Bones,” go the extra mile in their rhythmic free-for-all, ending up in a gently pulsating landscape not dissimilar to a weepier Stereolab or Tycho. Lest you accuse the Abs of simply piling on rhythmic flourishes, they even succeed at creating some impressively ghostly soundscapes on the haunting “Pareidolia.” For the most part, however, Lowlight Visions is a record concerned primarily with dreamy drift. The circular melodies they craft on tracks like highlight “Return to You” sound like they could go on forever, rotating endlessly in hypnotic bliss.

While Lowlight Visions may not immediately evoke the heart-wrenching loss that spurred The Washboard Abs to action, it can provide the same kind of shelter that it gave its creators. Lost in the chiming of guitars and the delicate mellotron, vibraphone, and synthesizer ornamentations adorning its brittle edges, you might find the sweet solace that’s been eluding you too.

TRACK REVIEW: Slow Dakota - I Am Held Together

Will Shenton

"I am held together by a string of pills." It's an abrupt and shockingly candid opening line, even for an artist like Slow Dakota. Those nine words set the stage for a song that feels more like a vignette from a confessional novel than a standalone track.

There's a distinctly hymnal quality to "I Am Held Together," with a meandering duet that gradually reveals the narrative over the first movement. This is a story about dependence on psychiatric medication, and while that isn't exactly the least-explored concept in art and literature, the matter-of-fact way Slow Dakota handles it is refreshingly direct and sincere.

There's nothing mysterious about the subject matter—our protagonist is entertaining the idea that these pharmaceuticals might be preventing them from facing their problems, and their life, honestly. "But I'm so tempted to make light / My regimen / And throw my Lexapro away / Would I die / Would my hands begin to shake / Like a church / Would my paint begin to flake / Or would I wake / And see my life as it really is?"

After a brief pause, the vocals withdraw and we enter a second, wholly instrumental movement that seems distinctly triumphant. With a resilient piano line at the forefront and swelling strings at its back, we're struck with the impression that perhaps our hero really did it—they freed themselves from whatever cognitive or pharmacological prison they found themselves in at the beginning of the song.

As the music fades, however, we are reminded of a second, darker possibility that would explain the persistent melancholy throughout the piece: the cold reality that many people who abruptly stop taking antidepressants end up committing suicide. The explicit narration never returns, so we're left to reach our own conclusions.

Perhaps what we take away from this song says more about us as listeners than it does about Slow Dakota, and that's exactly what I've come to adore about his music. Where "I Saw Christ Crying in Hermés" left me intrigued, "I Am Held Together" has left me speechless. I have a feeling there's quite a lot more where they came from.

TRACK REVIEW: KYYN - Walk on Water

Photo: ItsForGotham

Photo: ItsForGotham

Will Shenton

From the moment I heard the opening bars of KYYN's debut single, "Walk On Water," I was pretty sure I knew where it was going. This was another moody indie-electronic track in the vein of Hundred Waters, right? Well, in a way, yes. But there's a lot more going on under the surface than may be apparent at first.

It starts out simple enough, with slow-building synths and some hesitant, understated vocals—I got the impression that our narrator was someone who had been wronged, beaten down, and stood on the verge of capitulation. It's a pretty, though melancholy, progression, and eventually it builds into the first chorus: an explosive, cathartic movement that feels like a last, desperate act of rebellion.

The lyrics—"I'll walk on water / Make your head turn ... I'll walk on water / Make my getaway"—show two sides of the song's dilemma. On the one hand, our hero wants to escape, but on the other, she can't help but desire to be witnessed as she does so. It's the catch-22 of any good revenge fantasy.

What sets this track apart from those it otherwise resembles, though, is its finale. Rather than the expected climactic build, it goes for more of a denouement. The last minute is spent on relatively quiet instrumentals, with a haunting vocal line: "I'll get away." It feels as if the narrator is exhausted once again, weary from her choral outburst. But she remains nonetheless defiant.

Whether the antagonist of the song is a person or an abstract problem is something I'm not comfortable assuming on a review in which I've already made my fair share of leaps. For all I know, "Walk On Water" is an ode to jet ski racing. But regardless of subject matter, it's a hell of a jam, and I'd be surprised if KYYN doesn't see some pretty immediate accolades now that she's officially debuted.

TRACK REVIEW: Slow Dakota - I Saw Christ Crying in Hermès

Will Shenton

Slow Dakota (aka PJ Sauerteig) is a difficult artist to pin down. Informed by a background as robust in poetry as in music, his songwriting has a distinctly impressionistic, yet nonetheless narrative quality that gives it a depth demanding of nigh-academic analysis.

"I Saw Christ Crying in Hermès" is no exception to this. It's a track that's at once intimate and expansive, cerebral and emotional, and utterly gorgeous with relatively straightforward instrumentation. Sauerteig has planted his flag somewhere on the border between folk and baroque pop, but without ever meandering—just when you think the song has fizzled out, it explodes into a powerful chorus that wraps things up with aplomb.

Though there's surely a lot to say about this latest cut from The Ascension of Slow Dakota, it might just leave you speechless.