Who among us has not been deceived by a beautiful sweater only to discover a less-than-engaging wearer? Who hasn't looked over a shelf full of fascinating books only to hear the owner hold forth on some misguided personal philosophy? If something looks refined, it can be difficult not to admire it, which is why, on the surface, Lo-Fang seems like such a promising project.
It's got all the right elements to be perfectly tasteful and even a little bit profound: For his debut mixtape-turned-album, Blue Film, classically trained musician Matthew Hemerlein spent several itinerant years in places like Cambodia, Bali, and his parents' home in Maryland writing songs inspired by his wandering. He plays every instrument on the album himself, and, in interviews, he talks about writing songs on different instruments with the casual ease of someone who really knows what he's doing when he switches from cello to piano. His music unfolds slowly and seriously, punctuated with dramatic swells of violins and precise bass drum rumbles. It is immaculately well-produced. Plus, Hemerlein himself has the tousled good looks we all want from our hip violinists, and he's presented with the kind of lightly surreal visual imagery and swirls of color that helps us code things as deep and smart.
There's no question that Lo-Fang is in many ways arresting, and it's apparent as to why he's quickly gathered attention, as well as opportunities like getting chosen to open on tour for Lorde this spring. Hemerlein is clearly talented, and his music is full of intriguing, subtle touches of craftsmanship. The low, droning synthesizers that back “Blue Film” or the deft synthetic-analog banjo interplay that opens “Permutations” are the kinds of details that can, in many cases, elevate an album from good to great. He even lands on a few moments of genuine pop catchiness, like the jaunty, taut refrain of “tear it down/ Nothing matters” on early single “#88”. But for all his technical skill and the excellent presentation of his music as the kind of thing that has substance, he doesn't really seem to have much to say or any particular aptitude for getting it across.
Lyrically, Lo-Fang songs range from almost embarrassingly inert to annoyingly overwrought to frustratingly tone deaf. The themes they cover are intro creative writing class material: confronting the tension between having a sex drive and being a thoughtful person, searching for meaning in jealousy about an ex, being inspired by stuff in life. “I look to the stars and I look to the sea and I look to the faces on the street,” Hemerlein sings on “Permutations”, establishing, well, not much. Opening track “Look Away” is undeniably pretty, but it gets derailed by clunky lyrics like “I never figured out how to/ Unfold your paper cranes/ Origami agony.” Elsewhere, “#88” drifts into sincere Sufjan Stevens cadence to deliver the awkward metaphor of “An idea growing quietly from something within/ Spreads quicker than the cancer that destroyed your mother's skin.”
These moments would be understandable if there was some sense that the songs were taking any sort of emotional risk. But the stakes never feel that high, particularly given Hemerlein's uniformly breathy and slow delivery, a pretty but bored monotone that seems mostly suited for the emotional torment of staring out the window and sighing a lot. While the instrumentation is rich and carefully presented, it rarely generates much in the way of tension or energy, mostly sticking to a type of plodding, fussy minimalism that matches the ho-hum songwriting. Uncertainty and ambiguity can be powerful places to make art from, but here they are the end game, essentially stand-ins for a lack of coherent viewpoint.
These weaknesses are most apparent on the album's two covers, which seem to exist to underscore the aimlessness of the project. “You're The One That I Want”, from the musical “Grease”, trades the original's fun, upbeat cheekiness for torpid string arrangements and a sort of whiny desperation laced with charming touches of mild condescension. "Boris", a song about sexual harassment in the music industry by the (female) duo BOY, puts Hemerlein in the place of the song's leering male speaker and swaps out the original version's lyric about offering a cookie for an offer of Codeine. What is the point of this? Who knows. Like so much else on this pretty, polished album, it doesn't seem like it was done for much of a reason at all.
