Album Review
How To Dress Well - The Anteroom
4 StarsSurely How To Dress Well’s most exciting work to date.
Around the time How To Dress Well’s Tom Krell released 2016’s ‘Care’, he moved to Los Angeles in pursuit of his doctorate, and some observers felt as if they could hear it on the album; it was unabashedly poppy in its sound (Jack Antonoff was among the collaborators) and unashamedly earnest in its approach to lyrical ideas surrounding love, loss and mental health. It suited him down to the ground, but anybody pining for a return to a more experimental approach with ‘The Anteroom’ is in for some good news.
This fifth LP is sharply ambitious and probably most closely mirrors ‘Total Loss’ in its musical outlook; throughout, there’s a kind of sparseness that unites the tracks, although they differ consistently. ‘Body Fat’ is a gentle, electronic love song that swamps Tom’s vocals in reverb; ‘Vacant Boat’, meanwhile, which conjures images of the earth after humanity is extinct, is discomfiting in its discordance. A depressive episode of his triggered in part by the result of the 2016 presidential election inspired him to write an album on which “the energy never goes above three out of ten”, and yet there’s the occasional acceleration, especially on the nervy ‘Nonkilling 6 | Hunger’. The Anteroom is surely How To Dress Well’s most exciting work to date; it might, in time, unfurl into his most poignant and vital, too.
Read More
How To Dress Well announces new remix EP ‘One Train Hides Another’
He's also shared a track 'Vacant Boat (Mun Sing Remix)'.
21st March 2019, 12:00am
How To Dress Well shares ‘Vacant Boat’ video ahead of European tour
The track is lifted from Tom Krell's 'The Anteroom' LP from last year.
7th March 2019, 12:00am
How To Dress Well announces new album ‘The Anteroom’
Tom Krell has also shared the album's first single 'Nonkilling 6 | Hunger'.
12th September 2018, 12:00am
How to Dress Well - Care
2 Stars
Free-spirited it might be, but Tom Krell's music is neither one thing nor the other on 'Care'.
23rd September 2016, 10:00am
Featuring SOFT PLAY, Corinne Bailey Rae, 86TVs, English Teacher and more!