How to Dress Well - What Is This Heart?

How to Dress Well
What Is This Heart?
20 June 2014
Domino
 
4 stars out of 5

 

Tom Krell’s brand of ambient R&B has been the soundtrack to many a Pabst Blue Ribbon-fuelled love-making session since his debut, Love Remains, was released to considerable acclaim in 2010. 2012’s Total Loss caused further copulation, and now the third How to Dress Well LP, What Is This Heart?, makes it basically impossible to keep your pants on. But it’s a sad, sad kind of action you get with Krell’s music—the kind you get after bumping into your ex at the bar and realizing she’s still incredibly beautiful, and then she remembers that she’d forgotten her favourite socks at your place so she might as well drop by to pick them up. As you undress each other you’re both crying drunken tears: half joy, half what-the-fuck-are-we-doing-this-is-so-pathetic-and-cliché.

What Is This Heart? isn’t the cliché—you are (hehe). No, Krell’s got his own vibe, and while he might reference the genre of R&B as a whole with his vocal style, this is a bit like saying Lee Ranaldo references heavy metal music when he stomps on his distortion pedal—it’s a mostly empty statement. While tracks like “Precious Love” and “Very Best Friend” definitely resemble “regular” R&B in its composition, their production and instrumentation beg to differ, and on What Is This Heart? they’re the exception rather than the rule.

There are some incredibly strong songs here: “A Power” is the emotional peak of the album, with a combined urgency and sorrow that recalls What’s Going On, while the closer “House Inside (Future Is Older Than the Past)” is the epic ballad that ties it all together. This is Krell’s best work to date, and if there are still any detractors of his out there, an honest listen to What Is This Heart? should be enough to change their minds.

reviewed by Richard Krueger