Doldrums, or Airick Woodhead, gained minor notoriety through the self-release and publishing of VHS mixtapes and fake band websites to showcase new music videos. But how does Lesser Evil, his debut album, hold up without all the bells and whistles?
The record starts strong, that's for sure. Anomaly is built on chopped and modified samples as beats, with sustained Hammond-style keyboard tones floating above them, and Woodhead's ethereal androgynous vocals above that. It's a gorgeous pop song hidden behind an indie-credible electro groove. Infectious and polyrhythmic single, Egypt, recalls Dan Deacon at his most cacophonous. Like Deacon, the song is danceable and poppy enough to suit a party, but so layered that multiple listens are required to fully grasp the depth of composition here.
An absolute album highlight is She Is The Wave – a jittery anti-minimalist, schizophrenic song that, despite its sub three-minute run time, would come close to cramming more separate noises into a single song than nearly any other released this year. The fact that it works so well, not just as a 'noise'-influenced song but as a pop song, is the crux of the album's ideas. That is, for all of Doldrums' manic, over-the-top production, the songs all feel barely held together and fragile. Part of this is Woodhead's quintessentially young, perhaps endearingly naïve vocal delivery, but part of it is the separate, verging on non-musical combination of scattered sounds on every song, hidden behind pop hooks.
The album doesn't quite flow evenly at all times, but cohesiveness isn't the name of the game here. Doldrums has made a bold statement in Lesser Evil: frailty and humanity is present in even the least connected ideas.
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