Sunday, December 4, 2011

How To Dress Well When Love Remains


How To Dress Well is not a new show on Bravo but rather the strangest band you've ever heard. Pitched as a chamber soul record, How to Dress Well sounds more like a disembodied spirit wondering around a cathedral singing haunting anthems from the great beyond. The band's debut album, Love Remains, is an otherworldly experience that's as far from R&B and soul as you could ever hope to be and truly sounds like the voices of our departed. Love Remains is a chilling, haunting, and bizarre record that will either have you scratching your head, holding a séance, or seeking the assistance of a priest. I can honestly say I've never heard as anything as weird as Love Remains and I'm still not really sure if that's a good or bad thing.

Powered by the spiritual vocals of Tom Krell the songs of How To Dress Well are alien, otherworldly, and almost too unique for their own good. Imagine if you will Usher being deceased and constantly whispering into your ear and you can almost get a sense of what How To Dress Well. If this is a sort of "soul" record in the spiritual sense, than it's as if Dead Can Dance produced the record and a team of apparitions played the songs. In listening to this record, you'll truly be amazed by just how out there it truly is and I think that truly is it's greatest strength...it's just a odd mysterious record.

It’s a mystery and the uncanny music that goes along with it is a bit unsettling. By that I mean, there's nothing here for your ears to latch on to. The record thrives when it comes to ethereality but when it comes to actual verse chorus verse bits, Love Remains falls flat on its face. It's almost as if How To Dress well did everything they could to make an eccentric record and in doing so, they forgot that you still need a tune for people to hang on to. Unfortunately, Love Remains doesn't really have that. I love the fact that How To Dress Well took every stereotype about pop music, R&B, and soul and threw it out the window. Now, if they could find something that would make me remember what I just listened to, they would truly be on to something. As it stands though, Love Remains comes off as a super bizarre record that plays like some sort of haunted novelty record.

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