How To Dress Well - Love Remains

This is the debut LP by part Brooklyn and part Cologne based philosophy student, Tom Krell (How To Dress Well). The album is made up of different tracks that have been uploaded onto Krell’s blog over the past year. Regretfully, this makes the album sound very much like a compilation and doesn’t allow it to flow as one may have hoped. Commenting on his own work, Krell states that “the songs are organised like pop songs, but still disorganised and experimental enough that you can listen to them as a means of selfless possession.” Deep.

His self confessed love for R&B is clearly audible through the groove created by repeating loops, especially in ‘Can’t See My Own Face’ where the hook line has been borrowed from Beyonce. Another R&B link is in ‘Ready For The World’ which has been sampled in Lil B's new track ‘Why They Wanna’ Kill Me’.

Krell’s falsetto voice draws comparisons with such artists as Justin Vernon and Antony Hegarty. His multi tracked and looped voice creates an angelic choral vibe but the heavy amounts of reverb and echo make it almost impossible to make out any of the lyrics. Through repeated listens, the only lyric that I can clearly hear is from ‘My Body’; “I was hoping for the rain, I was hoping for you”. This lyric is very reminiscent of Jack Tatum singing “It was the hungriest night I ever knew, but it was hungry for you” on ‘Your Rabbit Feet’ by Wild Nothing.

Each song feels like a silhouette as only the faintest of details are given to you. The most fleshed out of the tracks is ‘Endless Rain’ which has a piano melody and a basic drum loop, but unlike like the title suggests it is over within 2 minutes. There are moments in this album in which every fuzz and crackle feels like having your ears tickled by the wings of an angel but there are equally mediocre parts which counter balance the beauty. An example of this is in the middle of ‘Ready For The World’ where an intense whistling sound penetrates the meandering vocal harmonies. This noise just sounds unpleasant and out of place.

In spite of this, it is a very promising debut and I will eagerly await a hopefully better structured second album.