Love Remains [Lefse,2010]
Love Remains is the debut full-length from How To Dress Well. These 14 songs are the stories told by the walls of abandoned buildings and the voices that lay lifeless beneath the floorboards. But, these stories are merely fragments of dying memories that haunt the rooms they once inhabited. Through gorgeously haunting voices, we may hear words such as “love” or “girl,” but these are just the ghosts of stories we have to write ourselves. And, as we piece it all together, we discover deteriorating images of love...
But, beyond these gorgeous voices, we hear the static and distortion of yearning desire. These songs surge into the red, crackling through our headphones as if How To Dress Well is dousing a campfire with gasoline, making it roar, signifying the emotional urgency at the core of every song. It’s the heartbreaking image of love that we see through shattered glass. Every time our speakers peak, the emotion becomes more clear and the stories we develop in our minds become more captivating, like the heavy-handed brushstrokes in blurry Impressionist paintings. Garnering inspiration from surrealist artists such as Hans Bellmer and philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, How To Dress Well, aka Tom Krell, creates music that is provocative and compelling. Born in the late-night hours when the streets are at their peak of emptiness and darkness, these songs were made in the solitude of Krell’s bedroom, where the mind is free to wander. And, it is here, in this gripping isolation, at the darkest of hours, that Krell’s voice emerges.
How To Dress Well - "Ready for the World" from Jamie Harley on Vimeo.
