Album Review: How to Dress Well - The Anteroom
Over the course of roughly six years, Tom Krell’s sonic ascension, as How to Dress Well, was very gradual—each step made sense: from
the murky and cavernous bedroom recreated ‘lo-fi R&B’ of his debut
collection Love Remains, to the
bombastic, Technicolor, infectious, and slick pop music of 2016’s Care.
Each step made sense, sure, but each step also was a
surprise that revealed the growth and development that Krell was going through
as a person, a songwriter, and a performer.
Care didn’t fall
so much on deaf ears upon release, but the opened armed embrace of pop music
led the album to be a bit misunderstood and maligned by both critics and some
of his audience—something that was, presumably, difficult for Krell,
considering how much work he had put into the project.
As a response, Krell recently, at the start of the roll out
for his fifth full length under the How to Dress Well moniker, said he was no
longer going to be making music ‘for the algorithm.’ That rejected sentiment is
very, very clear the moment The Anteroom
begins—it’s also clear that Krell has not so much ‘retreated’ to his earlier
sound, but he has definitely rediscovered some of the elements he worked with
when he began making music so many years ago.
Spanning roughly an hour, spread across 13 tracks (with two
additional pieces included on a 10” vinyl record if you bought the special
edition of the album) The Anteroom is
intended to be consumed as a whole.
Don’t be mistaken—it isn’t 13 songs; it’s 13 tracks, yes, but
it’s really, like, 20 individual pieces of music, sewn together as an
immersive, expansive sound collage. It can be intimidating at first, and at
times, unnerving and partially inaccessible, but juxtaposed against all of that,
there are some gorgeous and welcoming moments—making an album that is not so
much comprised of contradictions or opposites, but it is a convergence of
myriad influences and ideas that create a place both wonderful and strange.
Structurally speaking, The
Anteroom is fascinating. Well in advance of the announcement of the album,
Krell released the titular track as a stand alone single; it was paired with,
more or less, a collage, or preview, of other bits of the album—called Land of The Overflowing Urn, “The
Anteroom” was sandwiched in with pieces of “Vacant Boat,” “Nonkilling 1,” and
“False Skull 1.”
Those tracks all appear here, in the album’s final form—the
segues on The Anteroom are all named
either “Nonkilling” or “False Skull,” then followed by a number; the
fascinating aspect of all this, though, is that Krell was able to cut together
a seven minute, self-contained preview of the record, removing the pieces out
of their original context within the larger collage.
While it can be a challenging listen at times, this shows
just how ahead of itself and intelligent of an album The Anteroom is—it’s a self-referential song cycle that, believe it
or not, is capable of still functioning outside of itself.
If that even makes any sense at all.
Listening on compact disc, or off of a computer, then album
runs seamlessly, as intended, giving the listener no chance for a break from
the environment created. The vinyl edition is spread out on two LPs—the first
side featuring four tracks, with each of the others featuring three.
With an album built to run without interruption, it seems
like a disservice to split it up abruptly when the end of a side has
arrived—however, The Anteroom seems
to have been broken up with thought and care, giving the listener a break, yes,
but also finding somewhat logical stopping points, or chapter conclusions, at
the end of a side.
Using the word ‘dense’ to describe the album—both musically,
and lyrically—seems like a drastic understatement. Lyrically, it seems to find
Krell at his most personal, and possibly his most exposed as a person, not just
a songwriter or performer. He still writes using evocative, fragmented
imagery—but throughout The Anteroom’s
cycle, despite the icy exterior that the music creates, lyrically he wants to
invite the listener in. It’s full of poignant observations and pensive,
thoughtful reflections—a meditation on living life within the utter chaos that
is 2018.
And with those poignant, often philosophically based observations
about the self, and ruminations on being alive in these tumultuous times,
Krell—known for his howling, other worldly falsetto, manages to use his voice
in a number of diverse ways as The
Anteroom unfolds. Right out of the gate, on “Nonkilling 1,” he taps into
that haunted, higher register, slowly singing the stark lyrics—“I thought it was a pool of blood, but then
the cameras stopped/There’s no goal, there’s no god, break my skull, rip it off.”
In a sharp contrast, the next piece on the album, “Body
Fat,” bounces along slowly with almost whimsical instrumentation, and Krell’s
voice barely rises above a whisper as he delivers one of the first of many
really reflective lyrics of the album—“There’s
just so much pain and anger in your body fat.”
There is a darkness, yes, and even a violence to many of the
song’s lyrics, and many of the ideas are repeated or repurposed in other places
on The Anteroom, adding to the
cyclical, seamless nature of the album; the darkest arriving at the album’s
cacophonic, explosive conclusion, in “Nothing”—“Now it’s all or fucking nothing,” Krell exclaims. “Like you never had to hurt anyone. I could see you there—like the child wishing
the ambulance was for them.”
But it’s not all skulls, and blood, and the absence of god,
or harrowing considerations like, “And in
the movie of your life, you only speak in one scene,” from the titular
track; no, Krell gets even more personal on the album’s third side, with the
double shot of “July 13 No Hope No Pain” and “Love Means Taking Action.”
Not so much mirror images of one another, the two work as
companion tracks, seemingly charting a serious discussion between the two
protagonists—the former plays out like a spoken word piece, with Krell not even
so much singing a bulk of the lyrics as he speaks them while the jittery
synthesizer programming oscillates underneath him. The latter unfolds over an
airy, 1980s inspired synth, with the tension escalating—“She said, ‘I’m tired of taking your shit,’” Krell sings, quietly, in the first line, then shortly after, in
a moment of self-awareness, “She said
such profound things to me that I can’t repeat—words that won’t fit neatly on a
simple beat.”
Musically, The
Anteroom is a night and day difference between Care, and even 2014’s “What is This Heart?” It’s an impressive amalgamation that finds Krell as a
musician—something that is often forgotten, I think, because in live
performances, he is usually just singing, not playing any instruments—working
primarily with Ben Babbitt and producer Joel Ford to create the album’s
complicated sound design.
Krell, as a song writer, hasn’t completely forsaken pop
music—there are still little moments here and there throughout The Anteroom when you’ll find something
that’s a little more hook or groove oriented—a subtle nod to his love of 1980s
and 1990s R&B. However, a majority of the album is structured around
glitchy, desolate sounding electronics, with minor detours into incredibly
harsh dissonance and noise (often beginning or ending a piece); it’s not nearly
as murky or as discordant as Love Remains—the
no-fi bedroom recorded aesthetics are now replaced with a marquee name
producer—but Krell hasn’t abandoned murk completely. Midway through, on
“Ceiling For The Sky” and “A Memory, The Spinning of A Body,” there are some
pretty heavy Burial influences that arrive, adding another (surprisingly) layer
to the density of the record.
In the Pitchfork review1 of the record, it
mentions Krell’s intention, musically, with The
Anteroom, to make an “ambient dance record where the energy never goes
above three out of ten.” I suppose that is accurate, and one way to describe
it, though that sells it short.
Yes, there are a lot of ambient electronic elements, but
there are parts where the tempo of the album does pick up slightly—could one
‘go hard’ in the club with parts of The
Anteroom? Sure—if the club was filled with a bunch of sad people who want
to cry and dance at the same time.
Krell exercises a lot
of restraint in the way he deploys the electronic elements of the album—it’s
all very deliberately thought out and expertly manipulated. Synth arrays, drum
machines and skittering beats, and chopped up samples—for a record that is as
skeletal as The Anteroom can be
sometimes, it is clear just how labored over it was—making it all the more
impressive of an experience.
It’s described as ‘a single continuous piece of 21st
century psychedelia,’ and in an interview with Spin, Krell said that working on this album either almost killed
him or saved his life. It’s a drastic 180 from the direction he was headed in
with Care, but How to Dress Well, as
a project, has always been evolving, and for right now, this is the next
logical step—a harsh, electro-infused personal statement that reflects on two
years living in Trump’s America, as well as reflecting on one’s self—where they
have been, where they are, and where they are going.
There are moments, or selections, that can be picked out as
‘singles,’ or whatever—the title track, “Hunger,” and “Body Fat” were all
released in advance of the full record, but this is really meant to be
experienced from beginning to end. The
Anteroom isn’t the kind of record you toss on while in the car, or while
eating dinner.
Even when it reaches its most danceable, slithering peaks,
it’s still meant to be consumed while sitting in front of the stereo, not so
much lost in thought, but being open to the ideas presented within.
For those who sprung for the ‘limited edition’ vinyl
pressing of the album, along with the alternate cover art, The Anteroom came packaged with a clear 10” record containing two
additional tracks—“Sunrise Song” parts one and two—subtitled “A Meshwork of
Decisions Made by Fearful Creatures Plays Me Like A Game,” and “You Will Have
Had A Name, And I Will Have Sung It,” respectively.
The songs included on the 10” are, truly, for longtime How
to Dress Well fans only—they serve as a small companion piece to The Anteroom, but do not really add, or
detract, anything from the album’s complete experience. The first “Sunrise
Song” is the stronger of the two—structured around a pretty sick guitar (and
very uncharacteristic) sample, which gives away to a pulsating beat with Krell
dipping back into his penchant for pop melodies.
“Sunrise Song” part two finds Krell in mostly spoken word
mode, recalling a tale in which his puppy accidentally ate a chocolate covered
hallucinogenic mushroom—from there, it spirals into a very unstructured,
sprawling piece with Krell reflecting on The
Anteroom itself, his own anxieties, and much, much more; musically, it’s a
fascinating composition—a low, rumbling beat keeps things moving quickly, with
eerie, atmospheric synths coasting along the top of it. The way Krell delivers
his lyrics, possibly intentionally, are incredibly similar to Phil Elverum’s
cadence in a number of Mt. Eerie songs.
His foray into pop music for adults may have not exactly
worked out the way he wanted, but no matter what genre, or sub-genre, Krell is
operating in at any given time as How to Dress Well, The Anteroom is a true achievement for him as an artist—an
introspective journey that is both melodic and unsettling, further cementing
Krell, despite his own anxieties about his body of work, as a fearless artist
who continually makes music on his own terms.
1- It seems worth noting that Pitchfork more or less
turned their back on Krell’s music with the release of Care; they gave his first three records high ratings and the title
of ‘Best New Music.’ The Anteroom received
a 7.3, but a bit of a backhanded review.
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