New Memory is Malcom Lacey’s seventh release as Arrange in two years. He’s been a busy boy. The 19 year-old singer, pianist, guitarist, programmer, producer (what can’t he do?) crowdsourced the funding for New Memory's vinyl release with the ever popular kickstarter site. The page features a video of an ebullient Lacey on a road trip with a similarly smiling stranger amidst hi-def shots of streetlamps and glowing sunrises, feet on the dash and finally a door open to a new home. On New Memory we can see Lacey’s got that attitude. These ten ethereal and slow burning jams are his paean to PMA. It sounds like something he could call home.
With so many releases under his belt it would be easy to confuse his prolific output with a kind of restlessness. The songs on this album are anything but. His early recordings drew apt and easy comparisons to Xiu Xiu and Bright Eyes (although, they are more Gowns meets David Thomas Broughton) with long, loping songs built up of layer upon layer of guitar loop and Ableton Live effects. On New Memory Lacey builds lush sonic landscapes with sparse, considered arrangements. Here traces of Sigur Rós and Tim Hecker combine with R&B drum programming to develop something his own.
Its hard to believe that in two years his process has matured so much but here we have proof. For an album built out of so little the elements are finely crafted, as if to rhyme with one another. In the piano chords of opener, “Ivory pt.1,” we can feel the force of hands pressing keys as Lacey sings, “I felt the warmth of your hands flow through me.” The tracks on this album never rise above a trot and throughout the album there is space to catch its breath, as in the interlude, “æ.” The title is a character representing a diphthong, a combination of vowel sounds. Vowels are simple, but necessary to make words—think Rimbaud’s “Vowel” here—and in “North,” Arrange further explores how we combine sounds to make meaning backed with R&B-lite beats and a field recording: “spell love,” not “l-i-k-e” but “l-o-v.”
As the title suggests, the songs on New Memory are both contented elegies of difficulty passed and aubade celebrating the rising of a new day. “I won’t become myself undone/i’ve learned that i’m important to someone,” he sings on “North.” Simplicity gives these lyrics their power. The refrain acts as a talisman that shields from the dark while keeping the light close.
One of the album’s standout tracks—“Where I Go at Night” begins with flits of slow rising synths reminiscent of múm before moving to piano and subtle digital clicks, or are those soulful snaps from Lacey’s bedroom congregation? Lacey’s vocals here are rushed. He breaks, if only so slightly, the measured hush he employs throughout the album. Urgency fills the lines, “If I could take your burden off of you / I would if i could.” When his vocal run ends the song cuts to thick slices of tremolo pulse before opening into triumphant hip-hop break—the song refuses to dwell in defeat. Instead, the track provides the celebration the lyrics propose.
“Caves,” the album’s other standout track is available as a preview on the album’s bandcamp page. Piano, a drone, and submerged drums provide the palate for Lacey’s vocals. The formula is simple enough to propel the song to its conclusion, but instead the structure here is the most varied of all the tracks on the album. The drums pulse and vocals layer on top of one another (Lady Lazarus, a California based singer-songwriter, increases the vocal range on the track) creating a dense warm space. The track does not content itself to sit in a single space though. Its varied structure takes us to a breakdown like “La Forêt”-era Xiu Xiu before taking us home.
The title suggests New Memory is something already past. It is something you revisit, but it stays fresh. These songs take strength not from creating a sense of closure but by ending enticingly open, inviting repeated listening.
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http://inyourspeakers.com/content/revie ... y-07052012
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