Album Review: How To Dress Well - Total Loss

How To Dress Well's new record, Total Loss, sees Tom Krell in a significantly more optimistic frame of mind than on his 2010 label debut, Love Remains, although superficially there's a similar mood here. Heavy use of reverb over minimalist song structures continues to create a washed-out feeling to the songs, establishing an artificial distance, as though they were eternally playing in the next room over. The lo-fi distortions and red-line recordings that at times threatened to overwhelm Love Remains have been set aside though, replaced with much glossier, pop-friendly production.

Early single, Cold Nites, is easily the strongest track on the album, a brilliant slice of minimal swirling electronica with Krell's distinctive falsetto sitting over echo-drenched piano triplets and surprisingly propulsive handclap rhythms: it sits with Suicide Dreams 2 as his best work to date. While nothing else quite matches up to that track, the entire album, with the exception of the painfully earnest & It Was U, is impressive. Opener, When I Was In Trouble, uses slow, rumbling bass and a synth sound that recalls The Antlers' Hospice to introduce the album, decaying over its short length as vocals drop away and a Hecker-like drone closes out the song. When the sparse lyrics reappear later across Struggle it's a welcome reconstruction; a conceptual rebuild that suits the album's emotional journey.

Total Loss is a significantly easier listen than Love Remains, further embracing Krell's pop and R&B influences without sacrificing his own haunting sense of mood and place. It's a deeply affecting album and, thanks to the improved production, one that is likely to see a well-deserved expansion in the artist's audience.