By the time I realized I was really into this album, I had lost reason. I’ve been laid up after knee surgery and this album was my first foray into 2013 that didn’t involve physical therapy or standing on my porch letting the blood flow through my wounds. It was Joe and I online and I was all skeptical and weary but altogether impressed, when I heard “Bird.” I was sunk. Also, I was scared that the melodies had captured an atrophied imagination. I mean, I’m a sucker for the simplistic.
Simplicity is what Somewhere Else does well. The first duo-percussive finger snaps and reverberated drum hits of “New” prepare the listener for a record that never really moves forward or backward. Instead, Somewhere Else settles into a steady groove. Some readers will not like that groove. Some will. “Bird” flies in on a disgustingly simple yet ungodly beautiful key-loop that burns and swells in my mind despite staying the same volume throughout. A long outro leads the rest of the album’s metastasized warmth in gently, like a plane slowly pulling into its gate.
The warmth, though, is all production. Hidden in the bowels of each song are swirls of produced sounds and manically placed effects. The vocals are cold and removed, effectively warbled and distant. “I Am Haunted” would normally seem like a throwaway track– a kid’s song transposed to fit an adult landscape. But Indians is a solo project of Søren Løkke Juul, not a full interpolative project. So, the melodies and soundscapes are of one mind. Each time wind-noise blows over an acoustic guitar, a watery key-blend drops in, or standard elctronic noises accompany a song, it’s one man hiding his faults and strengths.
Of course, there are songs I do not like. There are songs that do not fit. That said, the ones I like are so strong and so fantastical that the album works just as well as background music as it does foreground concentration. You can measure the mistakes quickly while the nods and hums of the listener get lost in the weight of re-listening. “Lips Lips Lips” cruises in on jet wash and leaves as the most complete song in the bunch until the overwhelming and album-completing “Somewhere Else.” “Melt” bereaves and enlightens. The second half of the album seems so forgettable, but you can’t stop wanting to hear it.
If you should find yourself singing along as the album ends, you’ll refrain like I did: “Somewhere else, you are somewhere else.” And you are. This is escape music; a vacation from the normally frayed connections that force their way into music. There’s little to analyze and so much to hear– every long fadeout, every short interlude is placed as decisively as it needs be. “Cakelakers” is just an acoustic guitar and faraway swells of vocal effects and strings, but it works. The whole record works. Specifically, listening to Indians doesn’t feel like work. Somewhere Else describes itself and ends as wistfully as it began. No need to linger, you’ll likely remember it.
