Release Date: April 2, 2013
One-man band Michael Benjamin Lerner (a.k.a. Telekinesis) may hail from Seattle, but there are no ominous clouds or melancholic downpours to be found in his latest release, save for opaque synth plumes and vicious flurries of guitar licks. Dormarion proves to be a valiant effort as a sonic prescription for those sunless weeks and patches of self-doubt, but serves merely as a temporary fix.
Telekinesis burst on the scene with a stellar eponymous debut back in 2009, but Lerner seems to have struggled to burst out of the dense shadow ringing with jangling pop hooks cast by albums past.
Lerner has been spending the past few years looking for a cozy musical identity to finally settle into, and the struggle is evident in his pensive lyrics; he may not know what the hell is going on in his life, but his sometimes scatterbrained acknowledgement of that cluelessness is at least comforting.
Lerner spent two weeks in the studio with Spoon’s Jim Eno to gain a vague sense of self and walked out with 12 tracks. He’s definitely found something, but whether this new skin is fit for the long haul is questionable.
Lerner cracks into the 12-track album armed with an acoustic guitar and his lovelorn whinnies with “Powerlines.” It doesn’t take long, though, for Lerner’s tolerance for the tame to idle and make way for neck-squeezing guitar riffs and jangling percussion. The leashed-in garage rock vibe continues with “Empathetic People,” a passable indie jam that brushes off as over-fussed rather than unapologetically lo-fi.
Eno smooths over the cracks of authenticity in traditional scotch-guarded Spoon fashion, but Lerner manages to sneak in a few bloody reminders that these songs are streaming straight from a short circuiting brain. “Symphony,” a gorgeously spare acoustic number that pours out of Lerner’s impressively strong upper register is a welcomed tender moment in the otherwise high-strung album. Lerner throws in his 21st-century-living limericks, such as “I do believe that we are machines and we search till our parts intersect.” This halfway point gives listeners a taste of an unaffected side of Lerner that was, regrettably, left largely unexplored.
The following track, “Dark to Light,” barrels in with jostling distortion that eventually engulfs Lerner’s headstrong vocals. Coupled with a hacksaw riff, it leaves eardrums throbbing, and not in a sweetly masochistic way, either.
Lerner stumbles into redemption, though, with “Little Hill,” a straightforward rock nugget with a hammering bass line. The album gathers small packets of retribution as the end bleeds into the horizon. Lerner saves one of his best for last with “Ever True,” a gloriously New Wave-drenched groove blasting a bloated synth hook and a haunting rhythm section.
Dormarion ends with “You Take It Slowly,” which borrows the droning guitar riff raff of early Coldplay for some spotlight-stealing cameo appearances. The track uncomfortably oscillates between full-on fuzz cranking indie rock and cell block sparseness.
The album doesn’t reach an end so much as fizzle with a fading air of gusto.
Telekinesis’s third LP was less a coherent composition, more 12 songs air-sealed into 35 minutes. Heavy-handed with fluttering guitars and steady percussion, Dormarion is a reflective piece of indie pop, but all epiphanies fade into silence along with the nonexistent melodies-that-could’ve-been. If only Lerner had spent a little more time within himself and less in the studio, this could have been the moment of clarity he’d been waiting for, and the album we were all hoping for.
Telekinesis – Dormarion tracklist:
- “Power Lines”
- “Empathetic People”
- “Ghosts and Creatures”
- “Wires”
- “Lean on Me”
- “Symphony”
- “Dark to Light”
- “Little Hill”
- “Ever True”
- “Island #4”
- “Laissez-faire”
- “You Take It Slowly”
