On a cold day I have just walked back indoors. In from the December cold. Stomping my booted feet in the breezeway. Then. Into a warm kitchen. Inside I settle in with hot green tea with a bit of raw honey. I sit at my desk and fire up the Mac. I log into various sites and social media. Sign into my blog. I search for something that’ll inspire me. I search the many submissions in two email accounts. Plow through several blogs. Then. I find How To Dress Well’s cover of Teenage Spaceship and it glistens like the melting icicles out of doors. It cracks like the falling branches and falls into the chasm of my heart. I post this on my blog I am sated for the moment, but soon I’ll forages yet again. Peace. Continue reading “teenage spaceship | how to dress well | aaron read & tom krell | smog cover”
active child // evening ceremony
Whether you are lover or beloved. On this slight and chill Michigan morning it is Sunday and the music matches the countenance of the weather and the occasion. Behold. Fore the tender tendrils of spring are doing their determined best to permeate the frost strewn terra firma. And Active Child‘s track Evening Ceremony is knocking a ragged hole in your heart. “You Are All I See” Deluxe Edition is available now on iTunes via Vagrant Records. Peace. Continue reading “active child // evening ceremony”
how to dress well // again (janet jackson cover)
Chicagoan Tom Krell is doing some of the best music of his career and under the name How To Dress Well he is sculpting his own brand of unique and wondrously sensual R&B. This time out HTDW has taken Ms. Jackson’s cautionary heartbreak ode, “Again” and channels it through his own tender heart. The results are nothing short of what the fans of HTDW (me included) have come to expect. You can get the song on the bonus 7″ for all pre-orders and you can cop it from Acéphale in North America and Weird World everywhere else. Peace. Continue reading “how to dress well // again (janet jackson cover)”
how to dress well // cold nights
There are many elements to admire about the songs How To Dress Well produces. For starters, it’s the music. Which is all soft atmospheric orchestration, allowing the listener to let go and succumb to a thing of shameless, albeit, shy beauty. Then there is Tom Krell. He looks the bookish type, but there is a sultry R&B heart beating lustily beneath his unassuming exterior. I think inadvertently it’s part of what makes HTDW so interesting. That outward projection of the nerdy arty, and maybe a bit socially awkward persona is perhaps a visual sleight of hand. Most people see this image and formulate a knee-jerk opinion. But, when Mr. Krell sits behind his instruments and opens his mouth all kinds of wonderful things happen. And the old adage, “Don’t judge a book by its cover” slaps them up side their judgmental heads. In the end the whole package comes together, providing ample unconventional love songs.
So, whether you’re putting the finishing touches on an artful seduction or just basking within the night-time radiance of “Cold Nights” or “Ocean Floor For Everything” you will find comfort and romance in healthy virile abundance. By the way, the forthcoming LP Total Loss drops September 17th via Domino Records. Peace. Continue reading “how to dress well // cold nights”
how to dress well // ocean floor for everything
The music project known as How to Dress Well‘s latest track is the equivalent of another bullet in the chamber of the most capable of seducer. It opens with lush tones indicative of dreamscape rather than song. Then Tim Krell’s vocals crash every so tenderly against your ear and it’s a wrap. “Ocean Floor For Everything” is taken from HTDW‘s forthcoming 2nd LP Total Loss, look for it this coming Autumn via Acéphale. Continue reading “how to dress well // ocean floor for everything”
How To Dress Well – Suicide Dream 3 (Solar Bears Remix)
Tom Krell is a painter of the abstract. Dips his brushes into the night sky, and drags horse hair across the canvas of your numbed nerve endings. What he has managed to do with so little is to construct the grandiose into small pill-sized songs. Songs much like dreams, in that after you awake, you rub the fleeting fragments out your eyes and try to reassemble them before their beauty evaporates forever. From his Just Once EP we are given “Suicide Dream,” and it’s the proverbial bullet with butterfly wings. Here it is expertly reinterpreted by Solar Bears, and boy does it leave a soft bruise on your threshing heart. I also added “Decisions,” let it coil around your ears like bejeweled vibrations, and reverberate dulcet tones within the six chambers of your delicate heart. Peace. Continue reading “How To Dress Well – Suicide Dream 3 (Solar Bears Remix)”