THE SINGER IN MY BAND

On the way home from a deliciously punk-rock-prog show, the sudden, vivid, overpowering urge to hear This Is Lorelei’s just-released new album, The Singer in My Band, welled up like an irrepressible emergency.

So, a plunge into the depths of a record more stripped-down than its predecessors Holo Boy and Box for Buddy, Box for Star… The Singer in My Band marks the return of Nate Amos, the eclectic DIY prodigy known as This Is Lorelei, freshly signed to Matador Records, with a sound strongly steeped in Americana.

Far from the experimental electro art-rock of the duo he currently forms with Rachel Brown in Water From Your Eyes, from his former passionate duo My Idea with Lily Konigsberg, or from his even more experimental solo project Beetles, Nate Amos also steps away here from the unfettered This Is Lorelei productions he has been freely sharing online since his debut in 2012. His Bandcamp is endlessly rich!

Amos pulls off a true aesthetic metamorphosis, ditching the usual electronic textures and vocoders for a more organic sound. His warm baritone, mostly acoustic guitars with a few electric touches, the bluegrass banjo of his father Bob and the enchanting backing vocals of his sister Sarah on the title track come together in a sumptuously protean, mysteriously spellbinding whole.

You might catch Beck, Elliott Smith or Sparklehorse slipping into the strings, the vocals and even the silences, yet once again Amos shows a humility matched only by his creative genius, this time with an unprecedented restraint in the arrangements.

The album opens on a roots sound, acoustic instrumentation and old-school songwriting for “I Will Eat My Heart in the Morning Light,” setting the country-folk tone of the record.
But the rhythmic, melancholy indie rock of the second track, “Oh No Now My,” comes to remind us, with this anthem of nostalgic longing and regret, that Amos is anything but a one-genre act!
Then “Billy Came Back” brings us back to the album’s folk rock-Americana core, sprinkled with bluegrass banjo that underlines Amos’s heartfelt tribute to a local legend who vanished suddenly and whom he seems to hope to find again.
The short, purely roots instrumental “Nitro” is a remarkable interlude showcasing its composer’s acoustic guitar technique, building toward the next track, “Hey Sarah Is It Gonna Rain Forever,” with a swell of keyboards imitating hypnotic, bowed violin strings.
“The Kid With the Crown,” the most rock moment on the album, delivers a rawer, looser (liberated?), almost messy instrumental, punctuated by explosive, saturated guitars. “The album needed an untied shoelace and this is what I came up with,” Amos tells us, writing about accepting our imperfection and staying resilient despite failure.

A surprising record from this jack-of-all-trades with endlessly exploratory creativity: one to replay without moderation to uncover its many layers of meaning, or simply to let yourself drift on the enveloping breath of its seemingly carefree melodies. Take your pick!

Thank you, Nate…