This Is Lorelei: Field for Buddy, Field for Star Album Overview

To behold Stonehenge is to bear witness to the human capability for ingenuity. For songwriter Nate Amos, who information as This Is Lorelei, an encounter with the megalithic construction was life-changing: It satisfied him to give up smoking weed. The prospect of giving up a behavior he’d indulged practically daily for 15 years was daunting, however Amos determined to channel his subsequent stressed power into songwriting. Possibly it was the dearth of weed; perhaps Amos was constructing off the current success of his varied different initiatives; perhaps these Neolithic rocks transmitted one thing magic to him—regardless, the ensuing album, Field for Buddy, Field for Star, is a keenly crafted and splendidly adventurous set of songs, each earnest and appealingly humorous.

Amos had his Stonehenge revelation whereas on tour with Water From Your Eyes, with whom he makes razor-sharp art-pop; he’s additionally one-half of the whimsical duo My Concept with Palberta’s Lily Konisberg. However Amos has been releasing solo music as This Is Lorelei for years, treating the alias as a catchall for experiments and unfiltered songwriting, and importing to Bandcamp dozens of releases courting again a decade. In that approach, he shares one thing of a musical kinship with Alex G, one other prolific songwriter who received his begin releasing batches of bed room recordings on Bandcamp, and who—like Amos—combines a love for noise with Americana-ish songwriting. (As for Amos’ literal musical kinship: his father is a veteran bluegrass musician whose affect may be heard within the album’s moments of wistful twang.)

Field for Buddy, Field for Star represents the primary time Amos got down to write a correct This Is Lorelei album. Specializing in basic, sturdy songcraft, Amos performed, sang, or sampled the whole lot on the file himself, and his urge for food is huge; there’s singer-songwriter fare, Auto-Tuned pop, sampled strings, a meditative piano interlude. Whereas Amos’ ear for element turns Water From Your Eyes’ songs into chunks of pleasant chaos, right here his thrives are extra approachable, if no much less deft: the large classic-rock chords that minimize in after the primary verse of “A Tune That Sings About You,” the twinkly keys on “My Boy Limbo,” the dreamy vocal melody of “Two Legs.”

His plaintive lyrics about romance and heartache have a surprisingly easy emotional high quality. “Love, should you mentioned you wanted two legs/I’d provide you with mine,” he guarantees on “Two Legs”; on “A Tune That Sings About You,” he mourns, “All these cities look the identical with out you.” However even of their most honest moments, his songs are nonetheless the identifiable work of a goofball. “Dancing within the Membership” incorporates a reference to Steely Dan’s “Babylon Sisters” and a guitar riff that channels “What’s My Age Once more.” (Amos claims Blink-182 “saved” him and taught him to worth songs which are “quick, catchy and easy.”) The album’s opening moments sound like a curtain rising over a honky-tonk, a steel-guitar-and-strummed-chords soundtrack to a transferring duet between two parting lovers—besides that’s Amos singing each components, and it’s really a music a couple of cowboy who will get kidnapped by an angel.