In Revue: 'Wild' (Miguel)

While it seems ostentatious that kaleidoscopic crooner Miguel would surprise release a new EP of progressively druggy R&B less than a week after D’Angelo damn near broke the music web with his masterful sneak attack Black Messiah, it makes sense in the right frame.

Miguel has a penchant for psych-soul/funk/R&B "ballads" that transmute at least three times before his voice floats away from them. If D'Angelo didn't outright invent the style on his 2000 record Voodoo, he helped popularize it. A song like "Playa Playa" can shift from narcotized tribal chanting to muted horns and not bat an eye. Without D'Angelo's work on that sophomore LP, we arguably don't get: the Weeknd, Frank Ocean, Solange or Miguel. Miguel's decision then has nothing to do with brazenness; it’s a tip of the cap to a sonic forefather.

Even if this new untitled EP (Wild to make it easier) was positioned as a contender to D'Angelo's hazy throne it would still rightly be viewed as a success. Miguel really rose to prominence with the Art Dealer Chic EPs in 2012 and the format suits him incredibly well. Each plea for a late night rendezvous is more desperate; every line of pillow talk tenderer because you know there's a finite amount of time. The Sun will be coming up soon and then it'll all be over.

But that's one facet of Miguel's inimitable style. He can do braggadocio with the best of his R&B peers and Wild's opening track "nwa" allows him to fully indulge. "She just wanna ride with an NWA," he hums over closely-mic'd drums, G-Funk synth wobbles and dust settling guitars. It's the sort of the line that's infinitely cooler because of how calm Miguel sounds delivering it. He's not pretending, he's a legit "NWA," and if you don't believe him you can ask legendary Philadelphia everyman Kurupt. The Dogg Pound member goes the Miguel route, barely rising above a gruff whisper, but he doesn't have the same effortlessness. He's the dude memorizing pickup lines while Miguel's breaking the ice with something he just thought up.

And if closer "coffee" is any indication, those lines clearly work. What starts as chat about "street-art and high-fashion," accompanied by blankets of static and murmuring bass, soon "devolves" into tongue kissing. Everything follows a natural path until Miguel and unnamed lover end with "coffee in the morning." "Coffee" has one of the cleverer hooks I've heard in 2014, if only because it finds a new way to portray a night of passion. It documents the kind of psychic connection that can form between two people who started off looking for the physical.

Miguel's true genius then is taking genre tropes and spinning them into audio gold. Like "Candles in the Sun" before it, "hollywooddreams" should sink under the weight of its own idealistic hokum, but it doesn't because of Miguel's commitment to the material. He's earnestly hoping for a "big break," trying to find a dream lost under surging guitars and twinkly synthesizers. There's no doubt he'll spot that break. With the artistic vision Miguel has, he could find anything.

Track Attack- "Ready for the World" (How to Dress Well & cokc dokc, 2009)

In terms of covers, How to Dress Well and cokc dokc's haunting, echoplex take on Ready for the World's 1986 slowjam "Love You Down" is one of the worst ever constructed. Save for a sample of forgotten 90s singer INOJ murmuring from her own version, there's nothing even linking the former two together. The original "Love You Down" was lustrous and loaded with cheesy 80s staples like: bass plucks, descending keys, blankets of synthesizer, and unnecessarily soloing guitars. But in all its schmaltz it found time to achingly portray a romance heading towards peril.

While HTDW's Tom Krell and cokc dokc do capture an unmistakable ache, they gently toss all other markers of the original hit into a dark pond. Though Krell's expanded his sonic palette in recent years, when "Ready for the World" dropped in November of 2009 he was stridently lo-fi. Most artists with that label would recoil in horror, but Krell embraced the tag before anyone could pin it to him; referring to his sound as "lo-fi Shai". Still giving plaudits to him for self-awareness would be foolish, listen to "Ready for the World" just once and you'd be at a loss to describe it any other way. His crooning is nearly inaudible at times and his words entirely indecipherable. Frequently Krell’s jockeying for position against speaker bursting drums and droning electronics. Instead of extending his striking vocals into a soaring chorus, he cuts them off with a shrieking guitar part. As well as "lo-fi" works as a descriptor, perhaps "frustrating" is more apt.

I'll admit my own frustration is part of the reason I logged nearly 200 plays of the track in the weeks and months following "Ready for the World"'s release. At first my obsession had little to do with quality; it was born out of a desire to know what I was hearing. Akin to Grouper's spellbinding 2008 track "Heavy Water/I'd Rather Be Sleeping" I thought if I hit repeat enough I'd be able to hear past the song's histrionics and get to its heart. It got so bad that I'd leave the entire Friday Morning Hymnal EP on at night, in the hopes that Krell's intent would be imprinted onto my dreams. Thankfully my roommate loved the song himself and possessed a similar fascination, though I may be projecting there. 

Much to my chagrin nothing appeared, there was no "a-ha" moment. I continued to hear only Krell and shadowy production; occasional "oohs" bleeding into keyboard stereo pans. Each whisper danced tantalizingly close to my ear without ever extending a hand. After enough passes it began to sink in that I'd never figure it out. Moses wouldn't be coming down from Mount Sinai with a divine revelation. Somehow that was fine with me after a while. If the notion "some riddles are best left unsolved" had any merit, I had to let it go. Had How to Dress Well & cokc dokc given us a straightforward reading, it would've been forgotten about as soon as it went up on BlogSpot. That's not the case. Hedging towards five years since its release, "Ready for the World" still lingers in the collective music unconscious. When you hear the Weeknd, Shy Girls, or any number of "indie R&B" artists perform, you're faintly hearing ripples of the tune. Leaders don't have all the answers and the masterfully enigmatic "Ready for the World" demonstrates that.

"Repeat Pleasure"- How to Dress Well

In my review for How to Dress Well's jaw-dropping "Words I Don't Remember" I made sure to include the phrase "delicately croons." Quite honestly it's a phrase that could be appended to any number of songs by Tom Krell under the HTDW moniker. With enough emotional duress, the R&B artist's voice will begin to shake and waver. That recognizable falsetto becomes like glass: thin, seemingly translucent, and unbelievably fragile.

For all of the inherent bliss of new single "Repeat Pleasure", the first from new LP What Is This Heart?, Krell's voice displays some of its greatest fragility to date. Opening over a pensive acoustic guitar figure and staccato drum hits, Krell is tumbling between these realms of self-confidence and self-doubt. "Now that I've known you, the truth could never come without your smile," he sweetly hums. All of the lyrics point towards the end of a relationship, but Krell's performance suggests he's in the midst of something wonderful and new. He wonders how anyone could ever compare again, openly declaring "there's no one above you." Robbed of a physical he's sent into spiritual darkness, "thrown to the night" as he sees it through rosy eyes. In "Repeat Pleasure"'s ebullient climax, right before HAIM-like guitars and frenzied drum-machine playing take hold, Krell is at his most desperate and most confident. "Even broken my heart will go," he assures in a heart-stopping tone. The same love that can bring you to your knees can just as easily raise you up.




How to Dress Well's new album What Is This Heart? is out June 24 through Weird World and was produced by Rodaidh McDonald who has previously worked with: Adele, Vampire Weekend, The xx, and Savages.

"Words I Don't Remember"- How to Dress Well

Considering Tom Krell's blown-out R&B as How to Dress Well feels like a dream partially reconstructed, it was only a matter of time before he crafted a song title to reflect that feeling. In How to Dress Well's hazy world R&B "heroes" are paid homage, though the tributes have the thinnest connections to the source material. Even if you can hear through the thick-coats of reverb and distortions, pinpointing a single song as "inspiration" is still a Herculean effort.

"Words I Don't Remember"'s warbly synthesizer presents a similar challenge. Hearing it ring through the track's dark halls brings to mind countless instrumental breaks from 90s R&B, but it's too much of an abstraction to be categorized. It will warble in fear while building to climatic breaks that never come. The synth crests into waves that are warm to the ear, but cool to the touch. Out there somewhere in such a strange dichotomy is Tom Krell trying to stay afloat. "You know that I love you, baby, only wanted one thing on my mind," he delicately croons. Even in that initial pledge, there's a note of reluctance. HTDW's work is marked by tremulousness and here it's played to a hilt. Embracing those shivers allows Krell to wonder, "So what is trust but knowing when to let you have your silence, baby?" over a riffling background guitar figure. I've had similar questions creep into my head as I labor intensively to find a balance between giving someone I care about space and letting them go completely. At times, finding balance is seemingly impossible. There's no hard and fast rule as to what is "too much" or "not enough." One answer won't solve every problem. In Krell's case he resigns to promising "I won't tell you how to live out your life" as he fades into a fog of echoes. How to Dress Well's work may often be blurry, but here it's presented in stark clarity.  

Starting next week, HTDW will be playing shows with friend and label-mate Forest Swords at venues throughout the U.S.

Tour Dates:
3/17 San Francisco, CA - The Independent
3/18 Los Angeles, CA - The Roxy Theatre
3/21 Brooklyn, NY - Rough Trade NYC
3/22 Washington, DC - U Street Music Hall
3/24 Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church
3/26 New York, NY - Le Poisson Rouge
3/27 Cambridge, MA - T.T. the Bear's Place
3/29 Toronto, Ontario - Mod Club
3/30 Chicago, IL - Lincoln Hall