Album Review: How To Dress Well - What Is This Heart

What Is This Heart? is the third album from American artist How To Dress Well (aka Tom Krell) who made his name back in 2010 delivering cold and moody electronic music with warm R&B vocals on his debut Love Remains, right before that kind of thing became totally ubiquitous. This record gets off to a shaky start with opener 2 Years On, Shame Dream; its twanging, almost baroque-esque acoustic guitar and forgettable vocals as the only instrumentation hint at a new, much more boring direction.

Thankfully this song is more the exception than the rule, and second track What You Wanted bursts open in the chorus with heavy drums and smooth vocals, before the dark and super modulated Face Again confirms that Krell hasn't completely run out of ideas just yet. What Is This Heart? is a lot less optimistic or delicate than 2012's Total Loss; beats pulse and horns and strings are scattered around in beautiful chaos, but Krell's voice is still the most striking element. Even after three records his ability to harmonise with himself using loops and layers to highlight the dynamics of his voice, especially on highlight A Power, is incredibly impressive.

On Very Best Friend he croons, “I know I can be extra sentimental/Yeah it's dumb but sometimes it's just right” and this attitude runs through the rest of the record, with lyrics that are often clumsily, but unapologetically, emotional. On this record Krell's wrapped his sometimes painfully guileless honesty in music beautiful enough to soften the blow.