Why I Love How to Dress Well

(Note: Why I Love... will be a new column expressing love of an individual artist who I suddenly feel compelled to write about. This week, it's the ghostly R&B project of Tom Krell, How to Dress Well. Next week will be Perfume Genius.)

There's certain music you can't play in front of certain people.

For instance, I'm not going to let my dad hear Danny Brown give an ode to oral sex ("I Will"). Or, you wouldn't let your male friends know that every now and then that you listen to Third Eye Blind when you're alone.

But how does this apply to Tom Krell, aka How to Dress Well? Because if I were to listen to How to Dress Well, I'd be afraid that I would start to cry.

For a good reason though. Krell has a lovely falsetto and when it's translated to lyrics about love and loss, it feels like an emotional gut punch. His music demands your attention. It picks you up, slaps you around and sets you back down, feeling weary. However, it's not that the music is an emotional slog, with the artist submitting you to all the pain that they have felt (i.e. EMA, Iceage). The music itself, creates a personal (and personable) link between the listener and artist. Throughout the music, Krell lets you glimpse at the pain he's experienced, yet he identifies with your pain as well. The music is as much of a catharsis for him as it is for you.

How to Dress Well began as an anonymous project, seven free EPs of cracked, beautiful R&B showing up on the blogosphere. No one knew who he was, or his frequent collaborator, cokc dokc, for that matter (turns out, he was also cokc dokc). However, the music was soon linked back to Tom Krell a philosophy student who doesn't just reside in Brooklyn (like every single musician) but Cologne, Germany as well.

The EPs demonstrated a knowledge of R&B's past (surprising for a skinny, white Jewish guy), but it was on Krell's "debut", Love Remains, which collected the best songs from the EPs and some new ones, all coming together into one satisfying whole. From the beginning sample of the movie Safe on "You Hold the Water" to the ethereal closer, "Suicide Dream 1", Krell made a breakthrough in bedroom pop music. Krell mines the ignored parts of R&B, similar to the way Ariel Pink mines forgotten pop music of decades past.

What also made Krell such a polarizing figure in the R&B universe of 2010 was the absence of lyrical content concerning drugs and sex in his music. He's later explained his thoughts on this ("I have no problem with sex and drugs, I think they're both great"). Krell's said that the inspiration for his lyrics come from truncated scenes, or dream-like sequences. And Love Remains feels like a dream. But at other times, it feels if you're peeking through a hole in your wall, seeing the person behind crying over some emotional event. This affect is most prevalent on album highlights "Ready for the World" and "Decisions", but also on growers like "Suicide Dream 2" and "Suicide Dream 1" (dedicated to a friend who passed away).

The majority of the lyrics on Love Remains are obscured, with snatches coming through the musical fog ("don't forget to your cellphone", "I was hoping for the rain, I was hoping for you", "you don't ever have to worry"). This happens, because the music is decidedly lo-fi. However, where this can be frustrating in regards to other musicians, the instrumental decisions of Love Remains are just as impressive as Krell's falsetto. "Endless Rain" and "Lover's Start" sound like your favorite hip-hop songs. In the middle of "Ready for the World", all the music drops out, and a high pitched frequency comes in and it gets me every time.

After the success of Love Remains (it held spot 19 on Pitchfork's top 50 albums of 2010), some speculation arose about what Krell would do next as How to Dress Well. There was the EP released, Just Once which contained orchestral re-workings of the "Suicide Dream" tracks and "Decisions". So when his excellent sophomore effort, Total Loss, was announced many expected a much more "melodramatic Krell". Turns out, Krell tricked everyone again.

The instrumentation of Total Loss is much more fleshed out than it's predecessor, yet the music is sparse. Relying more on negative space, which is filled by Krell's voice, it sounds like something that The xx would be proud of. "Running Back" and "& It Was U" rely on little to no instruments apart from finger snaps. Yet "Cold Nites" and "Say My Name or Say Whatever" feature elegant, emotional piano lines.

As a whole, Total Loss is much more cohesive than Love Remains, possibly due to Krell recording the record all at once. "Struggle" reprises the lyrics of the opener "When I Was in Trouble", but this time, it's aimed at a lover and not his mother. Highlight "Talking to You" uses the instrumental that appears earlier in the album, "World I Need You, Won't Be Without You (Proem)" and he even manages to insert the instrumental's title in the lyrics of "Talking to You".

That brings up the topic of the lyrics on Total Loss. My goodness, the lyrics. On Total Loss, Krell's voice isn't obscured by static and other lo-fi trappings, and the listener won't have trouble discerning his lyrics. "Struggle" has the lyrical gut-punch of "I remember drinking with you in your bed... but in the morning we'd go and start again". On "When I Was in Trouble", Krell sings the line "Dear Mama, didn't you try to tell me everything would be safe" in his falsetto, and then repeats in mid-vocal range, giving it a chilling effect. "Cold Nites" is about all of Krell's shortcomings. "Ocean Floor for Everything" closes the album, with Krell declaring "I have my future". It may be the happiest moment on the album, yet it's still delivered with Krell sounding on the verge of tears.

But the second to last song, "Set It Right" blows everything Krell has done out of the water. It mixes the blown out reverb of Love Remains and desperate lyrics of Total Loss. The song begins with moaning vocal samples. Krell sings along with them, but his voice is mostly obscured. That is, until about two minutes, when the music crumbles around him and comes down to a haunting piano and Krell singing "Jamie I miss you, Mama I miss you..." and continuing down the list of people in his life. Krell recorded that portion of the song in one take, on the one year anniversary of the death of his best friend. Krell describes his singing on that bridge as "naked" but it's also beautiful. Then, the moans kick back in, but this time Krell is singing as loud as he can over them. He offers one of the album's best lyrics: "as far as love goes, it's one step at a time... be true to me, I'll be true to me too".

Based on just that one line, Krell's music is true. It's true to him and to the listener. It's a feeling, that "peers" The Weeknd and Frank Ocean can't pull off, simply because they're not as passionate. Krell's music is passionate as well, as exemplified throughout his entire discography. It's hard to describe the emotion and feeling conveyed through Krell's music. Be true to him, all you have to do is listen...