Warmer... Warmer...
It’s fitting that, with his latest project, New Yorker troubadour Luke Temple evokes ‘magic,’ a word as mutable as it is, um, magical. Magic can come to mean pretty much anything in the descriptive context; but in writing about music, it’s often used to evoke the indefinable, that quality that exists in this collection of record sounds, that makes it transcend the plastic/vinyl/internet-wires upon which it’s pressed.
For Here We Go Magic has that sense of magic to it, that ineffable ‘something’ that makes it stand apart. Temple has made two solo albums before this; 2005’s Hold A Match For A Gasoline World, and 2007’s Snowbeast. Each is, on some measurable level, a ‘better’ album than his first under the Here We Go Magic handle: more accomplished, more keenly orchestrated, better written, harder worked on. But each of those records left me cold; Temple’s high, considered voice left stranded in decorative arrangements that favored properness and prettiness, that always seemed to err on the tasteful side of caution. With Here We Go Magic, Temple is suddenly making music full of warmth.
Anything is Possible
Operating under a magical pseudonym has allowed Temple to rewrite his musical mode. Culled from home-made, four-track recordings, his latest songs summon opaque atmospheres, building burbling, bubbling tunes thick with intrigue, cloaked in mystery. Inspired by homebound, layering-based, magnetic-tape alchemists from Arthur Russell to Ariel Pink, the self-titled Here We Go Magic debut finds Temple creating complex folksongs via ever-evolving loops of acoustic/electric/indeterminate instrumentation.At times, Temple even sees fit to shelve his voice; songs like “Nat’s Alien” obscure, experimental, tonal workouts in which Temple’s four-track funnels shifting masses of gaseous sounds, creating a vague sense of rhythm where none belongs. They contribute no small measure to the album’s sense of dreaminess, to the random ‘magic’ this project is alive to.
Yet, the best songs are the ones that take this floating ambience, and give it form and shape; constructing reoccurring patterns out of arrhythmia, building kaleidoscopic dioramas in which the rollicking songs add unexpectedly-geometric details as they go. And the best of those songs are those that, for all their four-track fug and densely-layered make-up, rather resemble pop-songs. Like the cascading “Tunnelvision,” or the discretely sweet “Fangela,” in which Temple’s Paul Simon-ish vocal dances through the diffused sound; leaving these cuts to sound, for all the world, like the, well, magical offspring of Grizzly Bear and Panda Bear.
Record Label: Western Vinyl
Release Date: 17 February 2009
