You would expect a solo record by Andy Stack to sound good—making records sound good is what he’s all about. Even in his own band, the Baltimore-bred duo Wye Oak, he is an elusive presence. His chattering drumming and engineering finesse, though integral to the uncanny sound, can seem almost incidental, backlighting the larger-than-life silhouette of singer-guitarist Jenn Wasner. Stack has been even more secret-saucy in other projects, from his studio and tour work with Helado Negro and Lambchop to the structures he helped build under the visionary pop-classical song cycle Spiritual America, with Wasner and composer William Brittelle. He is a maestro of marginalia, a technician who minimizes himself to maximize the song.
So of course, Release the Dogs, Stack’s first solo record as Joyero, sounds good. Threading kinetic dream-pop with latent strands of electronic music, it has something of the rubbery minimalism of Arthur Russell’s early disco and the pointillism of Animal Collective, the tangled understory of Caribou and the skyscraping canopy of M83. The production is lush yet astringent, all lemony glares and purpley shadows. The arrangements are usually restrained to a few limber strands, so that every decision stands to account. But there’s a difference between sounding good and being good.
Stack lands on the right side of that difference, filling in his margins with a presence, a small but warm and agile voice, and a knack for melody. “Alight” is an invigorating start, weaving propulsive bass and fingertip percussion into a net that keeps hauling up great, shining organ chords. The vocal melody on “Dogs” burrows through a dreamy, locomotive arrangement for guitar and electronic pads and slips into your ear, where it lodges fast. He places words as carefully as filters and fills, nestling in syllables so they add a layer of rhythmic definition. The overall impression is of gentle vigilance, soft tension, a certain insomniac energy.
Outside of its most nocturnal passages, Release the Dogs feels optimistic. It takes a little while to notice that it’s actually a breakup record. Recorded in Marfa, Texas between Wye Oak records, fixed addresses, and relationships, the record uses a central canine metaphor to outline a flickering state of transition, somewhere between tame and feral. It develops through second-person address and elliptical vignettes, such as the domestic scenes softly humming and crackling in “Starts.” On “After You,” Stack sends his lamentation traveling farther than ever, laddering from his lowest vocal register to his airiest and back again, as if he’s trying to get away from himself. As is always the case with records cast for a me and a you, the listener sometimes wonders, then where am I? But look, it’s a breakup record. Everybody gets one, and it’s the only embryonic thing about this markedly long-steeped debut.
