Teen Daze has an on-and-off relationship with the dancefloor. It makes sense: the artist known otherwise as Jamison (he uses only his first name professionally) lives in the Fraser Valley, an exurb of Vancouver that isn't exactly known for a clubbing scene, and it's far enough away from its larger neighbor that you'd probably need a hotel room to bother going out. His earliest work was lumped in with chillwave, but through releases like All of Us, Together, the rhythms started to become the focal point of his productions, leading him to play club sets and even DJ occasionally. But melody has always been Jamison's strong suit, which has lent his dance-oriented work a heart-on-sleeve quality that's more Tycho than techno. It also means that his time spent away from the drum machines—like 2013's delicate Glacier—have been the best showcases for his songwriting. And now, with Morning World, Jamison finds his voice. Picking up a guitar (and a studio full of other instruments), he plays, plucks, and sings his heart out for his best record yet.
Following a number of turbulent life changes, Jamison travelled down to San Francisco to work with John Vanderslice, who helps imbue Morning World with indie rock's warm, analog glow. It sounds almost nothing like previous Teen Daze material. Only Jamison's fluttery songwriting remains, and the new style puts his pleasant idiosyncrasies into sharper focus. Instead of pirouetting synths and daydream melodies, Jamison's singing is the center point of Morning World. His voice is wonderfully meek and boyish, with shades of Ben Gibbard and Doug Martsch in his soft, clearly enunciated delivery. It's a great match for the baroque sound he's built with Vanderslice, which feels ornate and well-appointed without reaching for the ostentatious.
While the meat of Morning World is largely string instruments and drums, Jamison's nostalgic synths play an important part, always lurking in the background. Synths swirl underneath the title track, giving it the childlike lilt of hauntology practitioners like the Advisory Circle, and add vivid color between the lines on upbeat highlight "Life in the Sea". The latter is an ode to swimming that underlines the album's core theme: an appreciation of the simple things around you. Two of the album's tracks, including opener "Valley of Gardens", paint verdant pictures: "I've come to watch the flowers as they grow/ Another chance to feel how little I know/ And another morning spent no feeling alone."
Those lyrics highlight a naïveté that's been core to Teen Daze since Jamison was young, which makes his romantic songwriting feel as earnest as a Postal Service song. It comes to a head on the LP's climax, "Infinity", which is one of his most touching songs yet, breaking out into a soaring coda where he repeats "Let me stay a little longer/ I can find my way back home." In the wake of the breakup of a long-term relationship that preceded Morning World, it's an elegant refrain that packs an adolescent's world of emotion into one loaded phrase.
When Jamison isn't being so direct, the album falters: "You Said" is a blandly casual instrumental that feels like treading water (think "Flying" from Magical Mystery Tour), while "Post Storm" goes for epic but ends up dawdling through its hefty six minutes. Those signs suggest that Jamison might still be working to reconcile his singer-songwriter direction with his many past selves, but he sounds remarkably assured for the rest of it. More importantly, he sounds like himself more than ever—which makes Morning World Jamison's most captivating and personal album yet.
