When Shane Michael Boose started uploading melancholic bedroom pop as sombr, he was a voice major at LaGuardia, the New York performing arts public high school whose alumni include Nicki Minaj, Ansel Elgort, and Timothée Chalamet. Learning GarageBand before graduating to Logic Pro, he developed a dreamy sound built on lush harmonies and debilitating yearning. With just default drum sounds and amp emulations, he fit right in with a strain of indie-adjacent acts like Cigarettes After Sex who lacked radio hits or critical acclaim but amassed billions of streams. After signing to Warner Records and bringing “50 to 70% finished” demos to Phoebe Bridgers’ producer Tony Berg, sombr got the budget to actually build his wall of sound. As his star power grew, so did his confidence and commercial appeal.
His debut full-length, I Barely Know Her, follows in the lineage of his viral influences. Call it “yearncore”: The emotions are big and the choruses are bigger, but the production is too washed-out to risk actual vulnerability. It’s music to sink into, an electronic dreamy mush that’s somehow equal parts Foster the People and Mazzy Star. In one corner, you have more refined groups like crushed and Night Tapes; in sombr’s corner, you have poppier acts like actor Dylan Minnette’s project Wallows and NYC singer Del Water Gap, whose aching 2020 hit “Ode to a Conversation Stuck in Your Throat” is sombr’s most immediate precursor.
It’s hard to tell whether sombr is being referential, derivative, or just savvy. On “Undressed,” he must know what he’s doing when he all but directly quotes the Neigbourhood’s similarly spring-reverb-laden “Sweater Weather,” one of the most streamed songs ever. More shamelessly, Phoebe Bridgers’ second-most streamed song is Stranger in the Alps five-minute centerpiece “Scott Street,” and so sombr offers his own five-minute centerpiece called “Canal Street,” using the same tempo and slow-build structure. To an extent, this worship is forgivable from a young artist finding his voice. On I Barely Know Her, all we know about sombr is that he has complicated feelings about women and uncomplicated feelings about 2010s indie.
He also has pretty solid pop instincts. It’s easy to appreciate his way with a hook, and his vocal range remains impressive beneath all the effects. You might wonder if a Tobias Jesso Jr.-style future writing for other artists is in the cards. Plus, he’s surrounded by talented people: An album with Prince’s guitarist Wendy Melvoin on several songs and Shawn Everett on the mix is guaranteed to groove and sparkle in all the right ways. Unlike his peers who let their voices dissolve into the background, sombr is up front to the point of a jumpscare on opener “Crushing,” where he announces his presence with overdriven Julian Casablancas-indebted saturation. The polyphonic choruses of “We Never Dated” and “Back to Friends” lend some weight to breathless early comparisons to Brian Wilson.
A problem is that sombr’s lyrics have this strange attitude towards women (in awe of, in fear of) that lands him closer to “Smart Girls” than “God Only Knows.” There’s now a Hot 100 hit with this lyric: “I don't want the children of another man to have the eyes of the girl I won’t forget.” That line caught on for a reason, if not a good one, and it’s indicative of how the breakup songs are just slightly too mean-spirited to give him the benefit of the doubt. In “Come Closer,” he’s falling over himself for a femme fatale, saying, “You’re the only one I want/And I ain’t one of your pawns.” He’s more enjoyable with endearingly corny wordplay like “I miss the days when we were crushing on each other/Now you're just crushing my soul, my lover.” But this trick also has its limits, getting overly cute on songs like the shuffle “Dime" (“You’re a ten and I’m a man that needs a dime”) and reaching unintentional humor when repurposing the famous line from Brokeback Mountain on “I Wish I Knew How to Quit You.”
A pair of songs break from the yearncore formula and lean into pure melodrama, and they’re the most promising. Current hit “12 to 12” recalls Brandon Flowers' gloriously histrionic 2015 solo record The Desired Effect, reviving nu-disco by sheer force of will and a swaggering vocal performance. The playful ’80s synths suggest someone leaning all the way into campiness, a surprisingly good fit for an artist who can come off suspiciously sincere. The other highlight is closer “Under the Mat,” where he amplifies a heartbreak to epic Springsteen levels. There are still clunkers like the worryingly vague line “She and I didn’t see eye to eye on politics and such,” but when sombr and his lovr are moving into a shoebox apartment, it’s hard not to root for them. Instead of hammering in the point of a relationship that fell apart, this time he’s interested in examining why it fell apart. As much as they loved one another, these two simply couldn’t overcome their differences. She was a suburban girl. He was a city boy. And no, sombr can’t make it any more obvious.
