Having deftly arranged records for left-of-center heavyweights such as Animal Collective, Black Dice, and Silver Jews, as well as tracks by several members of indie rock's intriguing freshman class (Stars Like Fleas and Telepathe, to name a few), Nicolas Vernhes is shaping up to be underground rock's King Midas. For the inaugural LP of his recently launched Rare Book Room imprint (also the name of his Brooklyn studio and home to this year's excellent Living Bridge compilation), the accomplished producer is releasing Necima, an introduction to avant-pop crooner Lia Ices.
Ices (a pseudonym; she prefers not to disclose her real name), is a scholarly trained, Brooklyn-based singer and pianist who honed her chops at NYU's Tisch School for Experimental Theatre. There, she is said to have shed classicism and found her voice-- a captivating, aching alto that lives in a similar realm as Feist's, Cat Power's, and Tori Amos'-- which provides the central draw of this occasionally brilliant, sometimes frustrating debut.
Able to flit gracefully between sultry, come-hither coos and emotive yelps, Ices' vocals are indeed impressive, and while most of Necima's material calls for somber intonations, she displays a knack for accessing even the hard-to-reach upper registers. Of course, beautiful singing alone does not a great record make, and here Vernhes is on hand to infuse nuance into the album's arrangements. He puts to use a bevy of divergent instrumentation-- electric guitar, bass clarinet, various organs, a Colombian hand drum, and many others-- to add texture and unexpected flourishes of sound throughout. When Ices and Vernhes find a creative symbiosis, usually on the record's shorter, pop-leaning tracks, the results are spectacular.
The first of the record's successful batch is "Half Life", which explores stalled relationships. "We're in the middle of something we could lose," warns Ices atop the crisp and elegant production. Also gorgeous is "(Un)Chosen One", which subsists on acoustic guitars, a swelling chorus, and (lyrically) recalls Isaac Brock's great existential rant on Modest Mouse's "Lives". All uplifting personal spirit and positive emotion, Ices asserts, "These are our lives, these are them after all/ I'm not about to leave it up to how my cards are drawn." One of the most melodically driven pieces is Necima's final track, "You Will", and it puts on display precisely what works about this album: Concise, delicately sung pop songs imbued with attention-grabbing orchestration.
Several of Necima's tracks, although, do not fare as well as those mentioned above. Too often, the material meanders and become sluggish, most glaringly on the far-too-long (and rather tedious) "Many Moons" and "Twins". "Reason in Remain", which was originally featured on Living Bridge, also suffers from a length issue. Pushing the seven-minute mark, this otherwise decent track is spoiled by its refusal to close. Even album opener "Medicine Wheel", a piano-driven ballad that will incur the most Amos comparisons, hits lulling patches and begins to wander after expending its appealing content early on. But each sub-par track here belies a very strong one-- songs like "You Will" that could survive on playlists for months to come. As always, Vernhes' production here is inventive and memorable, and Ices' voice matches his distinctiveness. The work of a capable pair that has only missed the mark slightly, Necima, at the very least, has us eager to hear what comes next.
