This next album review doesn’t have a concert component, but I did see this artist live eleven years ago in Nashville. You can read all about it back at Disc 792.
Disc 1965 is…Resistor
Artist: Lera Lynn
Year of Release: 2016
What’s up with the Cover? Angles and shapes, yo! Also Lera’s disembodied head in a circle.
I’m not sure what this cover is going for, but apart from an exploration of rudimentary geometry, it does not land it.
How I Came To Know It: By 2016 I was already three albums deep with Lera, so this was just me buying her latest release and hoping for the best.
How It Stacks Up: I have seven Lera Lynn albums, which I feel is a lot. Of those, I put “Resistor” in at #4, so right in the middle.
Ratings: 3 stars
“Resistor” finds Lera Lynn doubling down on the same “mood music to be murdered to” kind of vibe that worked for her so well on her 2014 record “The Avenues” as well as her contributions to the second season of “True Detective”. It’s a warm and sultry soak in cigarette smoke and whiskey neat.
Sounds alluring – but it doesn’t come easy. “Resistor” is a headphones album – better when you can immerse yourself in it without distraction. As driving albums go it is a forgettable bit of background hum, but if you give it your full attention without the roar of the engine competing with the low notes and it is instantly so much better.
These songs are lounge personified, and while there is a wall of sound quality to it, Lynn’s vocals have an ability to travel through without ever breaking the broader mood.
The opening track, “Shape Shifter” is a bit of a banger, up tempo and with the snap of a snare drum and syncopation that won’t show itself much for the rest of the record. This song is the one tune that throws its hip into the street and invites you to give the rest of the record a chance. It’s a wise opening choice, but don’t expect more of the same, as the remainder of the record will instead retreat into the deeper swells of sound.
These are songs that take their time, and if you’re in a hurry it is going to irritate you. Lynn’s purpose is not to show you vocal gymnastics, nor to hop from one musical concept to another. She’s here for the slow burn, the late-night confessions that come only after the second bottle of wine gets opened.
Lynn’s early records are much more country in style, and through the mist and mystery of her more urbanized self you can still pick out a western twang, particularly on songs like “For the Last Time” and “Slow Motion Countdown”.
The subtle reverberation of “Slow Motion Countdown” features the many and varied dangers of the night: the rattlesnake in the midnight desert out back, and the distant stare from a lover in the booth across from you, both cold-blooded and dangerous. It’s a song about fading love, but more than that, it is a song about the untethered danger of what comes next.
There are places where the whole thing is so atmospheric it almost collapses under the weight of its own coolness, and not every song has the bones to hold the groove on its own. Just a touch more balance toward that earlier twang would have been welcome, but Lynn won’t go back to simpler times any more than the complex and alluring characters she sings about.
In the end “Resistor” is a slow dance of a record that can go a couple of different ways. Awkward and a bit distant if you are only willing to put your hands on its hips and avoid eye contact; evocative and tactile when you embrace it close against you, and surrender to its perilous charms.
Best tracks: Shape Shifter, Cut + Burn, Run the Night, For the Last Time, Slow Motion Countdown
No comments:
Post a Comment