This is sort of complicated, so try to follow along. Before Luke Temple self-recorded his murky, self-sampledelic 2009 debut as Here We Go Magic (the only release from the project thus far that features Temple all by his lonesome), he made two solo albums that mixed chamber-pop experimentation and singer/songwriter fare: 2005's Hold a Match for a Gasoline World and 2007's Snowbeast. While he was recording Here We Go Magic, he simultaneously made another solo album with a few friends helping him out, including future Here We Go Magic member Michael Bloch and Glass Ghost's Eliot Krimsky. When Here We Go Magic started gaining steam and turned into a full-band/full-time concern, Temple shelved the results, Don't Act Like You Don't Care, until the present day.
An early working title for the album was The Country Record, and that title speaks volumes. The majority of Don't Act Like You Don't Care is comprised of uncomplicated ditties, both jangly ("Ophelia") and bummed out ("So Long, So Long"). Temple experimented plenty on Gasoline World (Snowbeast, too); there are fewer risks taken overall here, which makes the record a fascinating window into an alternate-- and, to me, not totally desirable-- route his music could have taken had Here We Go Magic not attracted attention in the first place.
It's especially likely that listeners approaching this album are the ones who were initially ensnared by HWGM's increased profile; for them, potential (albeit minor) revelations are in store. Although Here We Go Magic's fleshed-out second album, last year's Pigeons, was far from the gestation period at the time of this LP's recording, you can pick out strands of that album's wooly, gently weird genetic code in the mutant folk of "More Than Muscle" and the unsettling twists and turns of "Weekend Warrior". Don't Act's sparse closing track, "Luck Part", slowly opens up with dark ambience and swaying unease. It'd be interesting to hear how these tracks would sound as played by Temple and his band now; they certainly fit in with his latest gig's M.O.
Don't Act Like You Don't Care is enjoyable but fails in key respects. It's poorly sequenced-- sprightly cuts up front with the slow, samey stuff crammed in the rear-- and the four-tracked production means that a decent amount of the material sounds like it never quite made it past the "basement demo" phase. In the three years since the recording of this album, Temple's made considerable leaps as a songwriter; a bit of present-day woodshedding would have likely benefited this material, which was recorded in a pair of four-hour sessions. Instead, this odd and intermittently pleasurable artifact just kinda sits there, an unintentional rebuke to the artist that orphaned this poor thing.
