Matthew Adam Hart's songs-- The Russian Futurists' songs-- are designed to go from his bedroom to yours. Maybe even from his actual bed to yours: if it's easy to imagine him recording parts of Let's Get Ready to Crumble huddled cross-legged with the blankets over his shoulders, it's even easier to imagine a lot of people listening to them that way. This arrangement hasn't been a novelty for many years now, but in this case it's important, because Hart makes it important. Whether he made this music in a bathrobe or a three-piece suit, it's still one of indie's best bedroom pop records in years, and the illusion of that bathrobe is a big part of what gets it there.
That "best in years" is, of course, mostly if you go for this sort of thing. The reasons why are almost too obvious to get at-- Hart just does a bang-up job-- and the simplest descriptions tend to make it sound much worse than it is. A one-man home-recording act with probable Beach Boys and admitted Beatles fixations? ("I still get chills," one song goes, "when I hear Paul sing 'Golden Slumbers.'" This is not the best sales pitch.) A cheapo-synthesizer enthusiast whose songs sound more than a little like The Magnetic Fields used to? (Circa Holiday.) A record that will likely appeal to fans of The Shins' Oh, Inverted World and The Postal Service's Give Up? There's nothing necessarily wrong with either of those records or any of those things, but these sentences describe far too many anonymous, infuriatingly boring albums-- albums one suspects record stores stock directly into their bargain bins-- for anyone not to wonder why The Russian Futurists should be much better.
Well, but: Hart's just awfully good at this. He's the sort of songwriter whose tunes are instantly and comfortably his: it's not the individual tracks of Let's Get Ready to Crumble that wind up stuck in your head but his whole approach to melody and sound-- humming a few bars of "It's Not Really Cold When It Snows" turns into humming a few bars of "The Matador's Theme", and that turns into putting the record on again for another listen. So Hart comes bounding out with the terrific title track, drum machine popping, organ chords stabbing, and synthetic string plucks following the melody as his sings his opening manifesto: "I do pop cause that's what my heart goes."
And wow, it really does sound like heart-bursting enthusiasm, in that way The Flaming Lips are always reaching for but have never nailed so casually. I imagine they'd be as impressed as anyone to hear that a song can seem quite this peppy (and quite this heartbroken) without turning precious or cloying; there's even some weird level on which you can start to think Hart sounds sort of badass about it.
There's plenty more to be impressed by, too, even apart from the endlessly idiosyncratic hooks. There's the fact that, for a bedroom pop guy, Hart has a remarkable grasp on rhythm: the title track strides like crazy, "Precious Metals" has a shuffle-and-clap beat that wouldn't be so out of place on a 70s soul record, and "The Matador's Theme" sports the spare, stiff drumbeat of a marching anthem; the clip-clop cadences of his vocals manage to throw in twists and pile on words like nothing could be more natural. There's also the (wall of) sound, immersive to the point of drowsiness, which has reverb painting space around the synths' cold humming and icicle-pretty plucky or the occasional acoustic guitar: those early Magnetic Fields records never had quite this same cold room, fuzzy blanket effect.
And then there's the extra quilt on the sulky, doe-eye baths of synth-pop romanticism that dot this record. "It's Not Really Cold When It Snows" is the show-stopper, with a melody that sounds like it was piped in from some alternate version of 1984 where it rained all year; "It's Actually Going to Happen" is its close cousin, with the drums dropping back again to let Hart strain sweet and hopeful at the top of his range. Elsewhere, his heart just goes pitter-pop in all of its various ways, and the worst it gets-- maybe on "You Dot, Me Dot, T-Dot", a smiley ode to lovin' in Toronto-- is vaguely slight, a little too blank and well-meaning to engage.
Most people already know if that's the sort of thing that makes them melt and cuddle or storm off wondering if the guy wants a cookie for being so sweet. Hart's melt-and-cuddle just happens to be top-shelf, and to have enough backbone to occasionally get beyond itself. As for the bedroom pop fix, the starry-eyed melodic idealism, and the swoony toy-keyboard love songs, it's like I said: here it is, done really well.
