Tom Krell has never been shy about naming his influences. On Love Remains, his How to Dress Well debut, they were pop and R&B acts like Ready For the World, Shai, Michael Jackson, and Bobby Brown. He's no less forthcoming about the inspirations behind his heartbreaking second LP, Total Loss. During the penultimate apologia "Set It Right", he provides a roll call: Ryan, Dan, Mama, Grandma, Francey, Robbie, Nicky, and the list goes on. None of them are famous, none are musicians. They're real people in Krell's life. Some have died (his uncle and best friend), others are living but have slipped out of view, many including himself are struggling with depression. So the title Total Loss gives you fair warning about what to expect. Where Love Remains drew much of its power from emotional suggestion and tactile sensation, Total Loss uses the common tools of pop expression-- four-minute songs, autobiography, choruses, confession-- to create a work of poignant and devastating art.
The cruel irony of Total Loss is that it finds Krell striving for directness and candor with family members who've become unavailable to him through breakups, depression, addiction, or death. The record's first lyric-- "You were there for me when I was in trouble/ You could understand for me that life was a struggle"-- is addressed to Krell's mother and reprised later on. Otherwise, the listener is in the position of the "you" populating so many of Krell's thoughts.
The sleek, alabaster sound of Total Loss is a far cry from the heavily distorted and distant Love Remains. That album wasn't considered a drug record for the same reasons Ambien isn't considered recreational, but its shrouded production mimicked the effect the drug can have when it starts to kick in: the sensation of controlling yourself in an out-of-body experience. That feeling is foreign to Total Loss. It's still flooded with reverb, but the anesthetic is gone.
As a result, Total Loss feels subject to heightened sensitivity both sonically and lyrically, and the effect is made more unnerving by the sharp, sudden movements of its elements-- harp plucks, ticking hi-hats, slapped snares and, of course, Krell's own voice. It's high, thin, and boyish, but in no way timid. His quavering falsetto creates an intriguing friction against the newly aggressive, seething tone of his lyrics, particularly when he grapples with the self-blame, hopelessness, and betrayal that survivors of suicide victims often experience. "Say My Name or Say Whatever" begins with a recording of a homeless teen from the 1984 documentary Streetwise describing the freeing effects of flight. "The only bad part about flying," he says, "is having to come back down to the fuckin' world," a projection of Krell's own idealism and disillusionment.
Though it contains Total Loss's most visceral, even sexual music, "Cold Nites" sounds downright angry. The hook boasts, "But I keep on doing it/ Ain't gonna stop until we're through with this," and it's an anger born from Krell's perception of his own shortcomings-- "Tell me what I've got to do to get better." Album opener "When I Was in Trouble" is a piano hymn that takes its cues from William Basinski's Disintegration Loops, decaying in real time. Krell moans, "Dear Mama, didn't you try to tell me everything was going to be safe?" and then repeats the line in a rare lower register. The effect is chilling, and indicative of the confusion that permeates Total Loss: Whether Krell is trying to find relief in hurting himself or others is left open-ended.
Fortunately, How to Dress Well's malleability prevents Krell from getting too ponderous. If you found his orchestral direction on last year's Just Once promising, there's the string interlude of "World I Need You, Won't Be Without You (Proem)" which is reprised on the emotive centerpiece "Talking to You". "& It Was U" pulls a similar deception, as Krell's accumulating harmonies disguise an imploding relationship over joyous new jack swing. It maybe lacks the shock of his earliest singles, and that's fine: Coming from someone discovering that his love for a style of music and his ability to pay it homage are starting to intersect, it's every bit as promising.
The rhythmic backbone of Total Loss's second half slackens a little, which can make the album feel frontloaded on the first few passes. Though Love Remains was more of a compilation than a proper album, its highlights were spread out judiciously. Total Loss doesn't fully compensate for its lack of clear standouts like "Decisions" or "Ready for the World", but it does benefit from a narrative cohesion that Love Remains lacked. Its path of grief follows psychology's Kübler-Ross model in chronology, from denial to bargaining to something resembling acceptance-- the lyric sheet even shows a smiley-face emoticon appending the "Set It Right" line, "as far as love goes, it's one step at a time." "Struggle" revisits Krell's love for blown-out reverb, obscuring gut-punch lyrics that attempt to reconcile the joys of reckless behavior with that sort of action's deadly, consumptive attraction: "I remember drinking with you in your bed… But in the morning we'd go and start again." And while "Ocean Floor for Everything" wasn't a stunning first single, erring too close to melodies Krell has used before, it's an apt sendoff for Total Loss, the point where the pain has settled in. But any hope here is implied. It's not explicitly a happy ending.
It's a fitting conclusion to a record that is very lonely for Krell and risky for How to Dress Well. In light of the "PBR&B" digs that initially circled Love Remains, it's notable that many of the most exciting artists to arrive in its wake (the Weeknd, Jessie Ware, AlunaGeorge) are nominally "indie" but incorporate modernist R&B in a similar manner. Krell hasn't benefited much from that swell of momentum, operating in a space that's far more niche and less overtly "pop," in both genre and populism. But Total Loss is similar to the xx's Coexist in retreating to further minimalism and introspection after a groundbreaking debut. It feels like more of a success because there's no dissonance between its artistic intent and its optimal home-alone listening experience. Its effectiveness is a result of its intimacy-- or, as Krell puts it on "Set It Right", being "true to you, I'm true to me, too."
