Benjamin Bear "Lungs" (Self-Released) Sounds like: That weepy kid who sat next to you in geometry glass, given his first piano Grade: B
Benjamin Bear describes their music as "stargazer," but they don't shoot nearly that high. On "Lungs," their debut album, the team of Mychal Cohen on piano and David Stern on drums creates a layered sound while working within the limited confines of their instruments, but clearly seem to hold back in their effort to create the feeling of looking up at stars. Instead of wonderment and intense introspection, the listener is served sad little songs that have a lot of heart but very little hook.
Mychal's lyrics have tinges of the surreal, telling his lover he'll "build her a house of balsa wood," but all of it seems grounded in genuine emotion. He sings to large extent about escapism in a voice chocked with an anguishing warble, provoking the listener to empathize with his tragic position. His sadness is worn on his sleeve - from his first word to the last fading piano chord, we're shown a songwriter who's awash in his own melancholy. By the end of the album it begins to feel a bit tedious - Come on! You must have one fun story to tell! - and the listener is left wanting some kind of divergence from the album's narrow emotional spectrum.
"Lungs" may not live up to its self-promoted "stargazer" label, as the band fixed their eyes instead on the more terrestrial sounds of simple piano licks matched with soft, mournful percussions. The sound is familiar but comforting: Bear takes what could be generic depressing piano music and twists it just enough to make it interesting. While "Lungs" certainly has its faults, this may be an artist to look to in the future.
-MICHAEL RICHARDSON
I Heart Lung "Interoceans" (Asthmatic Kitty) Sounds like: Shoegaze without the bite Grade: B-
I Heart Lung's debut "Interoceans" opens with freewheeling drums, sparse and struggling to find a guiding force or a central voice. It's a struggle the entire album tries to deal with, but it's only successful part of the time. Where artists who perform only instrumentals can paint wide swaths of emotional landscapes, it's a medium that requires precision and vision. I Heart Lung loses sight of this at times, relegating its sound to mere background noise.
Guitarist Chris Schlarb and drummer Tom Steck use each other's sound playfully, taking small little jaunts and tangents from each other. The album is broken up into four long tracks that vary greatly from beginning to end and - unfortunately - often lack definition. The first track "Upwelling" features delicate guitar picking from Schlarb, forming a whisper-thin sound that is then overtaken by Steck's wild, often incoherent drumming. The third track "Undercurrent" features more wistful shoegazing, as the instrumentations haphazardly cross over one another.
Much like the seas from which I Heart Lung clearly drew their inspiration, "Interoceans" seems capable of great power at times and lackadaisical melancholy at others. But in between these two extremes falls much of the album, which feels too unremarkable to cause the listener to stand at attention. It's more like lying down in the inflatable kiddy pool, drifting asleep to the sound of ocean waves far away enough to tune out the sound completely.
-M.R.
