Some things are best left to nostalgia. My favourite Stars album, Heart, might be saccharine and a bit overly earnest to new listeners (I’ve been told as much). Don’t care, it’s perfect in my memory. When The Postal Service announced their recent tour, I was stoked until I listened to the album again. The magic was gone. Time is kinder to some albums than to others.
Which is where this Thomas Powers album, A Tyrant Crying in Private comes in. It fits flawlessly into the space occupied by those two records. It’s modern and gorgeous stuff — beats made up of unusual sounds, a near-everpresent tape hiss, and surprising twists in the lyrics and arrangements. I don’t know about Powers, and I’ve only a passing awareness of his other project The Naked and Famous – but this is a fantastic record.
At first listen, lots of these songs sound like an updated take on the indie pop/emo universe that The Postal Service defined. Powers’ voice is sometimes quite similar to Ben Gibbards’ – clear, unassuming and melodic. The songs seem to be gentle, low-key, kinda sexy and sophisticated EDM. But slowly the more compelling elements start to appear — unusual turns of phrase drenched in autotune (“I’m a tyrant, crying in private” from the track above), the haunting piano or string sections, or the fuzzed-up beats, or the guest vocalist. The album is captivating and compelling in a stealth way.
Take the song Preston:
There’s just so much attention to detail there, and creative decisions that might have fallen flat in the hands of another artist (the distorted vocal on ‘apology’ for example) just work perfectly. The song is even better in the context of the record — the abrupt ending buts up against a long, beautiful string arrangement that begins Rogue Wave, creating a jarring but lovely moment – then less than two minutes later it happens again, leading into The Big Feel, maybe the closest thing to a banger that’s on this record.
The guest vocalists are used to fantastic effect. Their voices are often barely distinguishable from Powers’, and they circle and overlap as if in conversation with each other. Julien Baker guests on the opening track Little Lungs and album standout Empty Voices:
The music videos are beautiful. Everything about this project feels fragile, fussed-over and carefully considered, and the result is an album that exceeds the sum of its parts. Lyrically this record seems to be dominated by themes of self-doubt, failing relationships and some kind of listless optimism. Gloomy weather music, but the most beautiful kind.
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