Lovage

Chronique

After six years of producing other artists' music, Taylor Kirk returns to the Timber Timbre name -- and the project's fundamentals -- with Lovage, an album as restrained as its predecessor was lavish. Sincerely, Future Pollution's noir visions of 1980s funk, pop, and disco were artfully, intentionally excessive, but this time, Kirk pares his music down to peer more closely at everyday horror. Kirk cited Leonard Cohen and Brian Wilson as two of his major influences while making the album, and he does both of them proud. "Ask the Community" channels the former's knack for honeyed melodies and bone-dry satire (which only grows more pointed every time Kirk asks "doesn't it make you feel better?"). On "Mystery Street," he injects "Heroes and Villains"-style giddiness into its tale of evil hiding in plain sight. Kirk gives decay, despair, and hypocrisy an impressive number of disguises on Lovage, even if they don't last. Addictively sweet '60s pop curdles into bitterness and maniacal laughter on "Sugar Land"; on "Confessions of Dr. Woo," the alluring sounds of lounge give way to bubbling electro-jazz that evokes a mad scientist's lab. Coming after Sincerely, Future Pollution's maximalism, the album's relative subtlety is surprising, but it's just as complex on pieces such as "800 Pristine Corpses," a haunting musical purgatory that swirls fear, regret, and resignation together in its circular piano melody. Lovage's up-close-and-personal songwriting presents Kirk's commentary in its most direct form since Hot Dreams, particularly on its closing pair of songs. Equal parts quaint and disgusted, "Holy Motors" sets his condemnation of the addiction, pollution, and blight left in the wake of 20th century notions of progress to a twinkling sonic fantasia. However, any lingering irony falls away on the album's hymnal title track as he ponders the measure of love with hypnotic simplicity. Even though it's only eight songs long, moments like these make Lovage far from slight. The standouts rival Kirk's finest work, and every track is packed with the vivid imagery and sounds Timber Timbre fans have come to expect.

© Heather Phares /TiVo