The easiest critical dart to toss at an electronic musician is to suggest that his/her music doesn't boast the same kind of greasy, crooked fingerprints that lend other, non-computerized genres a sense of humanity. But Hrishikesh Hirway, the lone face behind the electric-bedroom swansongs of The One AM Radio, is perfectly poised to prove the opposite true, twisting and pulling his beats and effects until they burn like fingernails. Folding soft, singer/songwriter laments into fuzzy washes of constructed sound, A Name Writ in Water, The One AM Radio's second full-length, is a collection of swooning folk songs, just sweet and compelling enough to make your well-worn Nick Drake tapes feel curiously obsolete. And while they may not be as gory as a seven-minute guitar solo, Hirway's tracks still dripping with loads of gooey heart.
Since teaming with violinist Jane Yakowitz in 1999, Hirway has gradually delved deeper and deeper into folktronica nuance, rolling out subtle, beat-tinged poems and spare, instrumental elegies. Most of A Name Writ in Water trades in blurry transitions: The stunning opener, "What You Gave Away", starts with gently shaken percussion as Hirway's soft vocals give way to a fleeting violin wail and quivering maracas falling into puttering beats. Hirway's coos slip into computerized warbles, and a plaintive trumpet finally overtakes the melody, ending in a haze of sharp, sad yowls. Standout "Shivers" opens with glitchy drones and woozy violins, its emotional narrative only stronger for its lack of vocals. "Buried Below", though, is defiantly straightforward, its light acoustic strums and nervous drums backing Hirway's multi-tracked, melancholic pledges.
Hirway's lyrics can occasionally seem convoluted ("Streetlights spark to life as we pass by/ Caught in panes of warehouse windows and reflecting in your eyes/ Lying on your lawn on our sides/ We'll stay outside"), and are generally preoccupied with standard issues of movement, life, death, loss and love. But Hirway's prose is also peppered with imagistic bits of landscape, all grass and dust and summer sunsets. Coupled with his breathy, organic whispers, much of A Name Writ in Water invites big, natural metaphors, somehow only easily comparable to snow-capped mountain ranges or towering, Sigur Rós-ian icecaps. His compositions simply feel colossal.
Unsurprisingly, A Name Writ in Water is stubbornly unassuming in its prettiness, inadvertently figuring songs as portraits, melodies as promises. While not nearly as pert or quirky as The Postal Service's like-minded debut, The One AM Radio is just as addictive-- but Hirway's version of America is less concerned with enigmatically assassinated presidents, and more interested in charting the gray spots between highways and oceans, between guitars and laptops. The maps he draws are beautiful.
